The RM of Portage la Prairie's 2019 financial and strategic plans were released earlier this week, containing some good news for taxpayers.

The mil rate and tax rate won't be going up this year.

Reeve Kam Blight's pleased, and points to working toward efficiencies as a reason.

"We have seen a slight growth in tax dollars because of growth in our community," he says, "Our municipality is going in the right direction, as far as investment is concerned. We're trying to make sure that we do not need to increase the revenues collected from our taxpayers. So therefore, as assessment increases, the we can continue to lower our mil rate."

The strategic plan includes a long list of projects. Blight stresses they're in the early stages of them.

"We are working on our industrial park, but that's a long process," he says, "We anticipate maybe starting to do some work there later this fall. Some of these are long-term projects, but we still have to get them in the budget, and start planning now. We're trying to build our reserves to protect ourselves going forward, in case there are some unforeseen situations that arise, or some projects that we want to take advantage of quickly."

Here's the financial plan and the strategic plan.