After two long days of budget deliberations, Bradford council voted in favour of changes to the 2024 operating budget Jan. 10 that could result in an increase to the total tax rate of 4.26 per cent — or roughly an additional $220 for the average home.
In Bradford, the province’s Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) assessed the average home at $516,919.
The proposed increase could have been much more, with staff submitting requests that could have seen the total property tax rate increase by as much as 7.66 per cent.
As department leaders presented their requests, councillors discussed and picked out the items they felt were most important to the town and residents, adding them to a list for consideration. By the time all the departments had presented, that list contained enough additional requests to push the total tax increase to 5.44 per cent, but councillors debated further to trim it down, arriving at the 4.26-per-cent increase.
That’s only slightly more than the 3.98-per-cent increase contained in the “base budget” needed to maintain the town’s current levels of service, according to a report from town treasurer and finance director Ian Goodfellow.
“It was a long two days, but I think council did an excellent job. We’ve increased the service level of our community immensely. I love the fact that we put a lot of parks operators in there and we brought some programming for recreation,” Mayor James Leduc said.
He also praised councillors for supporting new senior staff positions as part of the town’s corporate organizational review, which is one of council’s strategic priorities.
“They started the process of the reorganization, which is going to help us build our leadership team so that we can continue to be serving our residents the best and most efficient way that we can,” he said.
The process isn’t quite finished yet, because only the library’s base budget was included, and requests above and beyond that won’t be considered until the next regular meeting of council on Jan. 16.
At the beginning of the first day of the special meeting, Deputy Mayor Raj Sandhu moved to have discussion of the library’s budget deferred as arbitration hearings have not finished between the library and the unionized employees over their first collective agreement.
Based on council’s decision from Dec. 19 on the town’s organizational review, the municipality's base budget included a new deputy chief administrative officer (CAO) position estimated to have a total impact on the operating budget of about $240,000 per year (after wages, benefits and other associated costs), with $160,000 approved for 2024 after council decided this week to offset $80,000 from user fees.
Other new staff positions and their operating cost approved in the base budget include:
- two part-time facilities attendant for the hub at 177 church St. ($101,682)
- facility operator for the hub at 177 church St. ($90,881)
- two part-time youth recreation centre assistants ($55,704)
- part-time customer service representative for leisure programs ($41,297)
- making the part-time fire administrative assistant full time ($14,780)
- a water supervisor (funded by user fees)
In addition to that base budget, council also approved adding the following:
- director of infrastructure services ($236,910 but user rates to cover $157,940)
- facilities supervisor ($135,313)
- deputy clerk ($98,014)
- GIS technician ($90,156)
- parks operator ($90,081)
- revenue clerk ($84,851 but user rates to cover $21,213)
- leisure programs and camps part-time staff ($84,306)
- communications assistant ($71,011)
- pedestrian barrier and grader rental ($49,900)
- additional park maintenance ($45,000)
- three part-time inclusion support facilitators ($42,786)
- senior financial analyst ($33,977)
- park summer students ($33,254)
- additional tree maintenance ($25,000)
- community emergency management coordinator alternate contract ($11,299)
- feminine hygiene products in town washrooms ($7,500)
- engineer for building department position (to be funded by user fees and building reserve fund)
While still receiving a majority vote, most additions saw at least some councillors opposed, with the big ticket items of deputy CAO and director of infrastructure services receiving serious push-back before being approved.
Other items were only approved after being reduced, such as the additional $25,000 approved for tree maintenance which was requested at $100,000, as well as the additional $45,000 approved for parks maintenance which was requested at $180,200.
That $960,205 of additional operating expense is partially offset by $214,000 in revisions for increased anticipated revenue, including:
- rental revenue from the hub at 177 Church St. ($91,000)
- program revenue from the hub at 177 Church St. (10,000)
- administrative monetary penalties (AMPs) revenue ($20,000)
- additional recreation program revenue ($80,000)
- additional cemetery revenue ($13,000)
All of that is also helped by anticipated savings of $299,500, including:
- decreasing the fire and emergency services volunteer budget by $180,000 (based on past surpluses)
- a decrease in the permit and licensing fees for fire and emergency services of $69,500
- a commitment from CAO Geoff McKnight to reduce the town’s cost of materials and supplies by $50,000
This is the first instance of a Bradford budget being implemented under the new strong mayor powers, which the Ontario government granted in the fall as part of package deal that allowed the town access to Ontario’s Building Faster Fund, after council committed to meet the province’s housing targets.
The budget was initially presented to councillors on Dec. 21, and in the strong-mayor system, they have 30 days (until Jan. 21) to propose amendments, after which time the mayor has 10 days (until Feb. 10) to veto those amendments. Following that, council has 15 days to use a two-thirds majority to override the mayor’s veto.
If a strong mayor does not attempt to veto any amendments within the 10 days, then the budget as amended would be deemed approved.
That scenario is unlikely to play out in Bradford though, as Leduc already assured councillors in November that he has no plans to use the veto power, and on Wednesday explained that if the library budget hadn’t been deferred, he had planned to table a motion to wave the remainder of both the amendment period and the veto period to approve the budget.
“We went through the budget line by line and worked our way through it. Council came to a consensus, and I think that we’re extremely happy,” the mayor said.
Having built that support with council, he hopes to have the budget process completed after the library’s requests are addressed on Tuesday.
“We’ll ask council to drop the amendment period and then the very next day, I will drop the veto period to get the budget passed, and as soon as that’s done, the budget’s finished,” he said.
The total tax rate also includes external factors beyond the town’s budget, like the South Simcoe Police Services budget, County of Simcoe budget, and provincial education tax.
For BradfordToday's extensive coverage of the proposed capital budget, click here.
