{"id":450933,"date":"2025-12-16T12:51:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T12:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/450933\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T12:51:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T12:51:16","slug":"2026-city-budget-approved-but-not-without-dissent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/450933\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 City Budget Approved, But Not Without Dissent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/st-johns-city-hall-dec-2021.jpg\" class=\"header-image\" alt=\"2026 City Budget Approved, But Not Without Dissent\"\/>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>St. John\u2019s councillors voted to approve the city\u2019s 2026 budget yesterday, but not all of them were on board.<\/p>\n<p>Ward 4 Councillor Tom Davis took issue with the \u201ceasy narrative\u201d that the mill rate hasn\u2019t gone up, while cumulative taxes have \u2014 through increased spending and higher assessed property values.<\/p>\n<p>The city is also budgeting increased revenue from overdue taxes, something Davis says should be a warning sign of the deepening affordability crisis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not just worried that people might fall behind, we\u2019re actually planning for it. We\u2019re increasing taxes while budgeting for more residents to be unable to pay them,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd this additional increase in value \u2014 which could be for some homeowners up to 30 per cent, the average is eight per cent \u2014 results in someone unable to afford their apartment. That\u2019s really happening and what we\u2019re doing (with this budget) may increase the chances of that happening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/danny-breen-dec-2025.png\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-287409\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/danny-breen-dec-2025.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mayor Danny Breen acknowledged the budget will be harder on some than others, but defended its overall fairness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do appreciate that there will be some increased costs for people whose assessments have rose,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think on the balance we are putting ourselves in a good financial position heading into 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A link to the budget document can be found on our website <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stjohns.ca\/en\/city-hall\/resources\/Documents\/Financial-Documents\/2026-Budget-Book.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; St. John\u2019s councillors voted to approve the city\u2019s 2026 budget yesterday, but not all of them were&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":450934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-450933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115729340980878088","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}