No change to mill rate or base tax
Town of Esterhazy budget
April 13, 2026, 1:05 pm
Nicole Taylor Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The town of Esterhazy passed its budget on Thursday, with no change to the mill rate or the base tax.
“This budget reflects council’s focus on maintaining essential services while making strategic investments in infrastructure and community amenities,” says CAO Tammy MacDonald.
The mill rate will stay at 8.5 mills, and the commercial mill rate factor will remain at 1.17.
The base tax will remain at $950 for residential and agricultural property, and at $1,150 for commercial property.
The $9,239,934 budget includes a tax levy of $3,221,265. Other major sources of revenue for the town include:
• Water Revenue: $1,075,000
• ICIP Federal Funding: $1,353,383
• ICIP Provincial Funding: $1,127,819
• Municipal Revenue Sharing Grant: $772,224
• Municipal Potash Tax Revenue: $241,778
• Reserves from utilities for the town portion of the water treatment plant: $969,716
Major expenditures and projects include:
• Water Treatment Plant: $344,917 investment toward development
• Recreation Capital Projects: $222,700, including new diving boards at the D.A. Mackenzie Aquatic Centre, resurfacing the outdoor arena into a multi-purpose space so it can be used for basketball in the summer and skating in the winter, new shingles for the Flour Mill, Medical Clinic, and Potash Interpretive Centre.
Public Works Priorities: $215,500 including: Purchase of a new skid steer with snow blower attachment, sidewalk replacement on Main Street, swale and drainage improvements, pavement patching in critical areas.
MacDonald says areas of strategic focus for 2026 include continued investment in core infrastructure, land development planning within the municipality, and long-term capital planning to support future growth.
As part of their motion to pass the budget, the town transferred $970,000 from the Water Treatment Plant reserve for the construction of the new water treatment plant.
The town also transferred a $550,000 surplus from reserves from projects that never got completed in 2025. That money will be used for the following:
• $170,000 to commercial land development
• $175,000 to landfill drainage
• $ 55,000 to outdoor rink
• $ 37,000 to swales
• $ 25,000 to S.N Boreen Hall
• $18,000 to library maintenance sidewalk
• $20,000 to Broadview Road development
• $ 25,000 to sidewalks
• $ 25,000 to street maintenance
A basic budget
Mayor Randy Bot says this year’s budget didn’t invest a lot into large infrastructure projects like repairing streets as the town wants to see how their infrastructure fares after the new water treatment plant comes online this year.
“Our goal going into this budget was, at the end of the day, to take care of the aging infrastructure, but at the same time, the water treatment plant is going to be coming online this year,” he says. “So we have to make sure that we have enough funds for that, and when it comes to paving our streets, when we’ve seen water treatment plants come online in the past in other communities, there have often been a lot of water breaks.
“We didn’t want to put a lot of money towards paving this year, because we don’t want to have to dig up those streets later.
“That was one of the things that we talked about the most. We know that the community does need some paving, but we’re going to do some patching this year instead and make sure that we don’t have any issues come spring next year when it comes to water lines, after the new water treatment plant has been up and running for a while.
“We are also just keeping up on maintaining our facilities this year. It’s a pretty relaxed budget. We’re trying to do what we can. We have money in reserves, so there will be a lot of work coming up in the next few years, but this year we just want to be a little bit more on the cautious side when it comes to unknowns with the water treatment plant.
“This year, we will be adding some water and sewer infrastructure on the west side of town. We’ll be putting some money into that because we’d like the new hospital to go in that area, and we want to be ready for that to grow to the west. And we’re going to be doing some drainage on Broadview Road and making those lots sellable.
“We are taking care of our sidewalks. We’ll be doing some patching on the roads, filling potholes, that kind of thing, just to get us through for another year. For the sidewalks, we have money carrying over from last year’s budget, and we will be doing a lot of sidewalks and painting the lines on Main Street.
“All in all, we have to take care of what we have, and I think that’s the main objective of this budget this year.”
Bot says there were few challenges to this year’s budgeting process.
“It went really, really smoothly. It went really quickly, we had two meetings, and then it was passed,” he says.
“It was just a very basic budget this year until we see what’s happening with the water treatment plant and how our current aging infrastructure reacts to that.”
