Kingsville Council has its work cut out over the holiday season.
The town's 2017 draft budget has been handed out and calls for a proposed 4.8% tax increase.
CAO, Peggy Van Mierlo-West, says that's just a starting point and council and administration are prepared to whittle that down.
"That is what staff will be presenting to council. We understand there is going to be some room for improvements to reduce that and we understand there's probably going to be some projects that might be cut for next year or tightening of the belts, but we believe it's definitely doable for us."
She says there's been plenty of behind the scenes work done already.
"We've had a few staff meetings to review our budgets. We gave staff a level of service that they were to maintain this year. This also includes the capital budget. So this includes our road projects that we're looking at, some of our park land projects that we're looking at. It's also includes additions to our reserves."
Van Mierlo-West says the town will be introducing 'lifecycle reserve funding' with this budget as well.
"What we do is we look at what the lifecycle cost of an asset is going to be and then we work our way back. So hopefully by 20 years we have our money in a reserve to actually replace that asset at that point which means that we don't have to really increase our taxes to a point that we're going to have a huge sticker shock."
Council has the Christmas break to digest the draft budget.
Deliberations are scheduled to begin January 10 at 9am.
A second meeting is planned for January 31 and if necessary, there will be a third session February 22.