Service Pricing Policy = Fair and Square
In 2006, Newmarket passed a Service Pricing Policy to ensure a fair and equitable balance between what users pay for programs and services and how much is drawn from the tax base.
The Service Pricing Policy guides the pricing of municipal services to meet cost recovery targets. Cost recovery is basically the amount of money that the Town will get back from running a program through user fees. For example, if the user fee for an existing program is $10 and the full cost of running that program is $20, the cost recovery amount is 50%. If the Service Pricing Policy has set a cost recovery target of 70% for the program, that means the user fees will increase to $14 over the five-year phase-in period.
What this ultimately means is that residents will pay a share of the cost of the programs that they decide to use so that these service and programming costs do not have to rely solely on the tax base. This equates to a tax saving of approximately 3.4%.The Town will continue to subsidize services and programs but the Service Pricing Policy will ensure that a higher percentage of the costs are recovered. Keep in mind that the Town will continue to subsidize programming and that the user fees that are paid go toward recovering the costs, the Town does not make a profit from its programs and services.
