Now that communities have had time to process the provincial budget and make adjustments to their own, the town of Assiniboia is optimistic for what 2018 will look like. 

They recently passed their capital budget and are now continuing to work on other necessary items during council meetings. 

"We ended up passing a capital budget of about 3.2 million dollars, the biggest of which includes a water treatment plant upgrade. We were approved for it last year for the CWWF (Clean Water and Wastewater Fund) Federally funding in partnership with the province," said their Chief Administrating Officer, Carol White. "That's going to be funded... about 75% between the federal and provincial governments and 25% from ourselves. That's 2.2 million dollars within our budget, that's the biggest chunk of our capital."

White noted generally they pass their budgets around 5 or 6 million dollars, but with their capital budget coming in at a much higher number than they're used to. 

"With the capital budget we're sitting at about 8.8 million dollars with a very minor surplus... just shy of $400. Not a lot of money to be able to create buffers."

Despite completing so much work since the province released their financial plans for the year, White said they still need to determine how citizens will be taxed. 

"We haven't determined mill rate at this point in time; we didn't get our finalized assessment list until this week. However, council indicated within this budget that they passed that they wanted to increase what we're bringing in by 3%. What we need people to keep in mind is a 1% increase in our budget in taxes is equal to about $25,000."

Administration will be proposing options, and council will have to decide how they would like to move forward.