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City council’s finance and economic development committee has endorsed increasing property tax bills by three per cent in 2020.

“We have to balance the needs of all of the groups that come and want us to invest in various programs with ensuring the city remains affordable, and I think that’s always the balancing act,” Mayor Jim Watson said Tuesday after the committee meeting.

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“There are some people that push for more spending and others that will want us to curb our spending, and I think it’s a reasonable compromise given the fact that we are a growing city and we have some pressures that have been given to us from the provincial government as well as construction inflation.”

Watson ran for re-election in 2018 on a promise to cap annual property tax increases at three per cent.

The breakdown for the proposed 2020 increase on the property tax bill is two per cent for the citywide portion, three per cent for police and 6.4 per cent for transit.