Halifax regional council has approved in principle significant increases to the municipality's fire service.

The budget could go up from $58.7 million to $71.5 million.

Much of that increase is due to arbitrated salary increases and a decision made in 2017 to hire 12 new firefighters.

Fire Chief Ken Stuebing said there are also training and overtime costs associated with the move to staff most trucks with four firefighters.

"The bad news is with new hiring and retirements, overtime will get worse next year," said Stuebing. "But it will get better after that."

Cuts or larger tax increase

The proposed budget for 2018-2019 already includes a 1.9 per cent increase in the average tax bill, which covers most of the increases to the fire service's budget.

But $840,000 worth of historically underfunded items such as training materials and uniforms have not yet been included. Those items were added to a wish list that council will debate at the end of March.

The problem is, that list now totals $1.9 million, so including the items will either mean cuts or a larger increase to the tax bill.

"I find that very, very unfortunate at this late stage of our process," said Coun. Bill Karsten.

"But it is a budget item," said Coun. Steve Craig. "We know we're going to buy them."