Skip to content

BREAKING NEWS: Your taxes are going up more than expected

Municipal taxes will go up 3.25% this year; That's about $100 more if your home is worth $250,000
2018-10-03 Steve Clarke
Orillia Mayor Steve Clarke said there is "some good news" in this year's budget, which resulted in a 3.25% tax hike. Nathan Taylor/OrilliaMatters

Ladies and gentlemen, your taxes are going up.

After five long days of budget deliberations, city council has voted for a 3.25 percent tax hike in 2019.

That equates to about $39 per $100,000 of assessement or a little less than $100 to the average taxpayer living in a home worth $250,000.

The decision is not official until it is ratified at a special meeting Monday night for that purpose.

Councillors spent more than two days wading through 156 items in its operating budget and wrapped up about 16 hours of capital budget discussions late Tuesday afternoon.

Councillors voted to spend about $1,868,000 in capital projects, which was about $92,000 less than expected. That relates only to capital projects that impact the tax levy.

There were many other capital projects discussed - 75 recommended by the senior management team and 18 others that council had to choose from - and approved that will be paid for through reserves; that does not directly impact this year’s tax levy.

“I think there’s a lot of good news in this budget,” said Orillia Mayor Steve Clarke, noting more than 85 per cent of the tax hike is going into various reserve accounts as council continues its multi-year campaign to replenish the reserve accounts.

The mayor said the “modest” tax hike is an “achievement” in light of the “exemplary and somewhat unusual” funding demands that came to council this year.

Clarke was referring to one-time requests, ultimately granted by council, from the Mariposa House Hospice ($150,000), The Sharing Place Food Bank (150,000) and the Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital Foundation ($500,000). See story.

In addition, the city also granted $16,000 to the Child Advocacy Centre of Simcoe Muskoka, $160,000 to the Mariposa Folk Festival in addition to the many "core services" it always funds.

Some members of council wanted to use the tax rate stabilization reserve to soften the impact on taxpayers and pare down the tax rate to 2.95 percent, which was the target heading into deliberations. (The tax rate stabilization reserve has a balance of about $3 million).

However, Coun. Tim Lauer likened such a move to a shell game. He said “for transparency” sake, he was not in favour of the move.

“We were presented a budget by staff at 2.95 percent and we chose some discretionary items and made political decisions that took that to 3.249,” said Lauer. “Let’s be straight with the taxpayer.”

Ultimately, council agreed, but Clarke was frustrated with the decision.

He said he and others made decisions throughout the process believing that most councillors were in favour of using the tax rate stabilization fund to mitigate the impact to taxpayers.

The idea, talked about at various times during budget deliberations, was to take some of the projected $2-million surplus for 2018, when available in the coming weeks, to replenish the money taken from the reserve.

For much more information on the budget including the capital projects approved and those denied, check back here tomorrow.


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.




Dave Dawson

About the Author: Dave Dawson

Dave Dawson is community editor of OrilliaMatters.com
Read more