The gap in Canton’s budget is estimated to hit nearly 4 million dollars if nothing is done to cut expenses or bring in more money.  Since more budget cuts would mean police layoffs, Mayor William Healy asked City Council to approve some moves on the revenue side. 

Leasing mineral rights on city property would raise an estimated half a million to a million dollars.  But, residents increasingly oppose fracking.  Like Darla Bruno, who told City Council Monday that fracking may be hard to stop at the state and federal levels, but this is the place to take a stand. “There is something we can do, at least—locally.  We can: not lease them our mineral rights; we don’t have to sell them our water. those are things we can control."  

Council pulled the ordinance from its agenda and did not indicate when or if it would vote on the measure. 

But it did take a vote, a close one, on a change in how much credit it will give residents who work in different cities for taxes they pay in those cities. The vote was six for and six against.  Council President Allen Schulman broke the tie with a yes and the measure passed.  While the amounts of money involved per person affected would be small—in many cases forty or fifty dollars a year--opponents like Ward-9’s Frank Morris said, trades people and contractors who work in many different places would face a nightmarish tax filing problem. “They’re going to have to file multiple returns; on top of that, with work being seasonal at times, if they are late filing their quarterly taxes now they’re going to get hit with a 9 percent penalty.”

On the spending side, Canton’s Council  approved a new contract with the union representing  roughly 270 maintenance workers. It includes a 2 percent pay raise that will cost the city about 300-thousand dollars