Deliberations on the city's 2025 budget are over.

Everything came to an end on Thursday evening at city hall with the fourth and final night of hashing it out over how much the city will spend between January and December 2025, as well as just how much your property taxes will be going up.

In the end, the budget for 2025 is projected to be a little more than $142 million with councillors settling on a hike of 6.14 per cent, slightly lower than the original proposed rate of 8.05 per cent. But since deliberations began, council has been looking for where to make cuts. That includes dropping a proposed dog pound that would have cost about half a million dollars and almost $250,000 to turn a field near Fritz Theil Park into a soccer pitch.

Other items dropped from the 2025 document include $288,000 to hire two new bylaw officers, $111,000 in terms of the adjustments made to casual staffing hours, $137,000 for a new booking supervisor and $6,500 in increases for dog pound fees. A proposed $310,000 to refurbish the city's tennis courts was pushed back to 2026.

Some of the items added to the budget include $10,000 to create bike lanes on Forrest Drive, $45,000 for upgrades at the dog park behind the Yk Community Arena, $25,000 for growth implementation, $60,000 to increase dog pound services and $97,500 to help cover the waiving of admission fees for the walking track and playground at the Fieldhouse.

With the additions and deletions in place, that meant an original revised property tax hike of 7.8 per cent, said Kavi Pandoo, the city's director of corporate services.

Pandoo also said things to keep in mind were that the city hasn't yet received its carbon tax grant, nor have any potential government grants for the lift station at the dump.

There was also the potential increase from the GNWT in terms of a community grant, as well as any increases in power rates, he added.

"Some of this is related to revenue," he said. "As long as we don't have signed agreements, we don't necessarily recognize them in our books. For the potential power expenses, it's still early days (and) no one knows. We do have some contingency built in our budget and we hope that it will be enough as we draw closer to the end of 2025."

But Mayor Rebecca Alty had an idea.

The city is due $629,035 thanks to a carbon tax grant from the GNWT; Alty told council she got this news from Finance Minister Caroline Wawzonek.

Alty said she isn't sure when the city would receive that money, but expects it would be in 2025. That, and the city would receive it before the property tax rate hike starts.

"We're going to get the money in 2025, it's basically a no-risk situation," Alty said.

City manager Stephen Van Dine echoed Alty's remarks, though he reminded council that administration would not be in a position to recommend it, but that council was within its rights to move such a matter.

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Although that funding was not factored in at first, Alty introduced a motion to include it now and council voted unanimously in favour of it, thus bringing down the tax hike to 6.14 per cent.

Council is expected to pass the budget at its regular meeting this coming Monday.