News from the May council meeting that the Rural City of Wangaratta's funding envelope across community, tourism and event grant programs had been halved was indeed a sign of the times.

The Rural City of Wangaratta's budget has been described by Mayor Irene Grant in recent years as going from "meat and potatoes" to being likened to a meal without the meat.

This year's budget is perhaps even light on the veggies, with the reduction in available grant money, as well as shaving of the the Outdoor Ball - for many years part of council's Summer in the Parks program - from next year's calendar.

Locals will also see a reduction in spending on contractors, marketing, externally procured tourism services and strategy development, and a limit on investment in new capital projects, and user fees and charges will increase in line with inflation and service delivery costs, to meet rising costs to council.

It is, as Cr Allison Winters elucidated, tough news for the community to hear - especially at a time when groups which would regularly seek to apply for these grant monies from council are in increasing need of assistance.

But it does indeed, as Mayor Grant said at last week's meeting, reflect "the environment we're living in".

Household budgets have had to be trimmed significantly to cater for the current crunch, and with the same rising costs as those being felt across the community - coupled with rate-capping below CPI for the past decade, and the scarcity of funding from state and federal governments - something had to give in council's financial planning.