Litchfield invests in roads, looks ahead to new fire hall

Litchfield invests in roads, looks ahead to new fire hall

As part of our annual coverage of municipal budgets in the early days of each year, CHIP 101.9 spoke with Litchfield Mayor Colleen Larivière about this year’s plans in her municipality.

Revenue

According to Mayor Colleen Larivière, there wasn’t a huge difference from last year’s budget, with overall revenues decreasing from $2.5 million in 2023 to $2.1 million in 2024, mainly due to a dip in transfers. This year, the mill rate increased slightly, from 63 cents per $100 of evaluation to 65 cents, and the municipality appropriated $196,382 from the surplus to balance the budget.

Lariviere explained the council’s rationale for the slight increase.

Expenses

Like most rural municipalities, road work accounts for a large portion of Litchfield’s expenses, and Larivière said that this year they would be expending municipal funds as well as funds from the TECQ program for resurfacing on  Church Road in Vinton, as well as installing guardrails in several locations throughout the municipality.

She said that they were making progress on the construction of the new firehall for the department that they share with the municipality of Campbell’s Bay.

The 2024 budget and 3-year capital expenditures for Litchfield are available here: Budget 2024