High River's Mayor says he proud of the work council and administration have done to come up with the 2017 budget.

Craig Snodgrass says it took a lot of work to go from a 2.6 per cent increase and whittle it down to a jump of only 1.1 per cent.

"Councils always have a decision, you can drop taxes, lower taxes become a hero but then you end up with no money to do anything so that's the hard thing," he says. "In this economy we recognize it's a struggle right now for a for a lot of people and putting tax increases on so that we can do more infrastructure projects, those kinds of things, and all the fancy bells and whistles, we're not just not in that climate right now to be able to do that."

He says with the document they approved Monday, council will be able to make sure there are no layoffs and keep the tax bill down during this difficult economic time for many.

He admits it was tough putting on a wage freeze for town employees.

"It's never fun to do but we all know what the climate is outside of that, we're pretty fortunate that everybody gets to keep their jobs and we did not want to have any layoffs happening or anything to keep this budget in line," Snodgrass says.

The town will actually take on one full time person and a seasonal worker for parks upkeep because of all the extra green space the Town has taken over in Wallaceville, Rio Vista and Beachwood.