Council asks staff to find cuts for 2023 budget

While work continues on finalizing Collingwood’s 2023 budget, councillors have asked staff to sharpen their pencils to find more savings.

During Monday night’s (Jan. 9) strategic initiative standing committee meeting, council were told that as the draft budget stands, taxpayers would be looking at a tax hike of 4.92 per cent in 2023.

However, council voted on Monday to send staff back to find ways reduce that rate to 3.92 per cent. As part of the motion voted on by council, the mayor suggested that some of the difference could be found by pulling funds from the terminals revitalization reserve.

“I believe (4.92 per cent) is still too high,” said Mayor Yvonne Hamlin when putting the motion forward. “We can’t do a slash-and-burn budget. There are a lot of important things here, but we have to balance that with the needs of our residents.”

Coun. Kathy Jeffery raised concern about sending the budget back to staff at this point in the process.

“I think council should be giving direction to staff as to what their druthers are. I think to truncate that...would not be a good process,” said Jeffery.

Treasurer Monica Quinlan provided words of warning when it came to cutting back the budget.

“Yes, we can deplete reserves more and have less tax rate impact... but if we deplete reserves, we have an asset-management issue,” said Quinlan. “We could cut programs and services, but is that something council is willing to do?”

“Just because we delay something, or defer something, doesn’t mean it goes away,” she said.

Coun. Christopher Baines spoke against the motion to ask staff to find ways to reduce the tax rate further.

“At this point, I feel we have squeezed about every drop we can out of this lemon in regard to efficiencies,” said Baines. “I’m satisfied with what’s presented here now.”

The current proposed 4.92 per cent tax rate is a result of council votes throughout the budget process that began with a first draft budget of just "unavoidable increases," which proposed a 1.78 per cent tax increase. 

The first draft also included a list of value-added items (also called items for consideration), some proposed by staff, and some the result of council requests from the previous year. Staff informed council that approving the list in its entirety would bring the tax rate increase to 5.15 per cent or higher, depending on which priorities council decided were most important to add this coming year.

These items include $314,000 added to the asset management plan reserve, $305,000 toward an urban forestry unit and $91,000 toward a transit coordinator position.

During second-draft discussions on Dec. 5, council voted to eliminate items such as $65,000 for a fireworks drone show, $100,000 for a heritage review, $50,000 in continued support for the urban economy forum and $12,000 for new software for social media monitoring. At that time, however, they voted in favour of bumping the affordable housing reserve up from $125,000 to $350,000 in 2023.

Council's votes to include the value-added items brought the proposed tax rate up to 4.92 per cent. Now council is telling staff to reduce it to 3.92 per cent while keeping in the items added through council votes over the budget process. 

The 2023 draft budget accounts for $133.7 million in spending, with about a 50-50 split for capital versus operating costs. 

The town's operating budget is broken down by department, and is only partially funded by municipal taxes. Revenue also comes from user fees and non-tax revenues.

Major capital projects in the 2023 draft budget include storm sewer repairs on Minnesota Street ($5.1M), widening Mountain Road ($4.3M), completing the Awen water play splash pad ($2.3M), Summit View Park ($1.5M), Wilson Sheffield Park ($1.1M), Hens and Chickens Trail bridge ($450K), full LED replacement for all municipal facilities ($600K), and replacing the accessible entrance doors at the Collingwood library ($150K).

At the end of discussion, council voted unanimously in favour of sending the budget back to staff to try to reduce the tax rate to 3.92 per cent, in part by allocating funds from the terminals revitalization reserve.

Council will be meeting to review the fourth draft of the budget during a special strategic initiatives standing committee meeting at 2 p.m. on Jan. 16.

You can review the 220-page third draft of the town's 2023 budget here.