Chatham-Kent Council passed its first multi-year municipal budget last night, with a budget increase of 5.53 percent for 2024.
The 2024 increase is mostly due to municipal infrastructure (3.11 percent) and police (1.14 percent).
Budget committee chair Councillor Brock McGregor said there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room in the budget.
“We knew right from the outset that this budget was going to be largely about inflation and about our commitment to asset management planning and what that would look like,” McGregor said.
“I think it ended up at a place that I think most of us expected and will be I think below what you see in most areas in Ontario this year.”
The overall budget increase represents a tax impact of approximately $185 on an average home assessment of $176,200, based on the most recent MPAC assessment done in 2016.
Council voted 10-5 to accept and adopt the budget.
Mayor Darrin Canniff brought in three successful motions to get the budget increase down from 5.76 percent at the beginning of the night to the final 5.53 percent figure.
His motions included taking an additional $25,000 from casino revenues and putting it into the 2024 base budget; adding $50,000 to the base vacancy management provision in 2024; and reducing the adjustment factor on asset management inflation from one percent to 0.5 percent.
First-term Councillor Ryan Doyle took a big swing at getting the budget down to a zero percent increase with a motion to take $10.5 million from reserves and add it to the budget.
Doyle argued that Chatham-Kent’s reserves are healthy, and that money would be better spent homeowners who are struggling with the property tax increase.
“If we end up taxing those people who can barely afford to put food on the table as it is right now and move more people into homelessness, we are going to have a bigger issue than we have right now,” Doyle said.
Fellow councilors said it would be a short-term gain for long-term pain. Others had concerns that infrastructure projects would be put off or set aside in the next couple of years, due to taking money out of the reserves. Chief Financial Officer Gord Quinton said using reserves for this purpose is “poor long-term planning.”
Doyle’s motion failed by a 3-12 vote.
Looking at the last 25 years of Chatham-Kent, Quinton said considering unemployment rates, agriculture income, wage levels, family income, and low caseloads in social services; the economy is relatively good.
Doyle also brought in a motion to reduce the asset management plan levy by half a percent. That motion failed by a 4-11 vote.
Mayor Darrin Canniff said “Municipalities across Ontario are battling inflation, and Chatham-Kent is no different. We passed a budget at 5.53 percent, despite four percent of that being inflationary costs. This budget includes no service cuts and features much-needed additions to our police force and infrastructure, which will put more police officers on the streets, help maintain and improve our extensive infrastructure, and help address the need for affordable housing in our community.”