It's a tight budget for the Town of Ponoka as they focus on the essentials only for 2017.

Many cuts ares being proposed included suspending the Community Peace Officer program, eliminating the town's safety officer position and freezing wages for council and non unionized town staff.

They have also minimized contributions to Town Budget reserves.

Mayor Rick Bonnett says going forward they're going to have to get creative when it comes to funding services and programs, including the posibility of regional collaboration.

He explains some of the challenges of creating the budget "our revenues have dropped significantly with everything that's happened in the province, so we did basically a bare bones budget just to make sure that we are providing, trying to hold the same services, hold our staffing together and make sure that we can get through this and at that point in time we'd look to expand things".

Bonnett adds there's also a 4 per cent tax increase for residental and commercial properties but that could decrease slightly when the final budget for 2017 is presented to council in April.

Capital projects on the books for 2017 include the Downtown Action Plan, which will help revitalize the downtown and an Area Structure Plan to guide development along the Highway 53 and Highway 2 corridor.