Sudbury city council finalized its budget for 2022 Wednesday night, resulting in a 3.1 per cent increase for taxpayers.
Greater Sudbury Mayor Brian Bigger said it was a very challenging budget this year because of all the major projects happening in the city.
"We were as high as 3.5 per cent including all the key projects and operational needs that we see coming forward," Bigger said.
"One of the things that we were able to do was to include anticipated revenue from the province for our supervised consumption site and that enabled us to get back down to 3.1 per cent."
Bigger believes the $1.1 million costs of the consumption site is a provincial responsibility and he believes Queen's Park will fund it.
"It was a measured risk and I was very open with council and the public on that conversation," said Bigger.
"However, we don’t have formal approval on provincial letterhead. I do have the assurances of the minister of the government in power that our program would be funded if and when we receive our federal exemption for that particular site."
The mayor said the city does expect the federal government to provide that permission in March.
Meanwhile, Ward 7 city councillor Mike Jakubo said he is pleased with this year's budget settling on a tax increase of 3.1 per cent.
"At the start of the process, we were looking at a 3.2 per cent increase for 2022 taxes," Jakubo said.
"As an overall kind of theme, I’m quite pleased that through five meetings of deliberations … (the) committee was able to get that down to 3.1. The usual trend is that we see an increase over the course of those meetings, so this is a bit of a success story."
Even though there is a provincial election next June, Jakubo said he’s confident the funding will come through for the safe drug consumption site.
"There is an established process in place for getting provincial funding," Jakubo said.
"We know that first involves approval from Health Canada. Once that Health Canada approval comes in … history tells us the provincial funding is almost automatic."
The construction on the safe consumption site is scheduled to be completed in March.
The tax increase in 2021 was 4 per cent.
