Council in Fauquier-Strickland has decided to increase taxes by 20 per cent for 2025. While that’s much lower than the 80 per cent considered earlier this summer, residents were still frustrated when councillors approved the hike earlier this week. The community had been facing bankruptcy before the province agreed to a $300,000 bailout – provided certain conditions were met, including passing a budget to raise money to continue operating. “The ministry was asking us to finally get a decision to get the taxes out so the municipality can have a financial flow in, have money to operate,” said Mayor Madeleine Tremblay. “Right now, we cannot.” Coun. Pierre Lamontagne said the 20 per cent increase is something they can accept. “It’s going to take a while to get back on our feet, but we’ll try to find ways to survive,” Lamontagne said. “So 20 per cent is good with me.” Coun. Claude Brunet said if they could function with a smaller increase, they would. Need to pay the bills “But we do need to pay our bills, so 20 per cent it is,” Brunet said. Tremblay said people may find the tax bills high because the water taxes are included. But residents in attendance at Tuesday night’s meeting were clearly upset. “When is it going to be less?” one person asked. “We’re just hearing ‘let’s just raise the taxes, let’s just put it on the taxpayers,’” said another. “But we’re here tonight to say no, that’s not what we want. We want to find out what happened and we want to make it right.” Tax bills will be sent out within 21 days of the bylaw being passed. The municipality is more than $2 million in debt and had been functioning on a line of credit, which has been exhausted. That left the community with no choice but to raise taxes to access the bailout funding from the province.
