Municipal councils are busy working on new budgets, and this time it’s more challenging. 

Souris-Glenwood Mayor Duane Davison says rising costs don’t just apply to the gas pump and grocery store. He says everything costs more and that makes it more difficult to balance the budget. 

“Everything we deal with is impacted by it so anything we’re looking at going forward will cost more. That means we must guess what things will cost down the road. Paving is now a ridiculous cost and everything we deal with costs more because of inflation and some of that is due to the carbon tax.” 

Davison says most communities have an aging infrastructure and council must deal with that issue yearly because it’s too expensive to do too much work at once. “I don’t know if many projects are being deferred but the reality is work, we take on will cost more to get done.” 

He says they’ll get down to some serious number crunching this week and his hope is to keep any increase at or below the cost of living.