County of Simcoe councillors got a peek at the 2021 draft budget Thursday morning.
The county’s $572-million draft budget for next year was presented with a zero per cent tax rate increase for 2021; however, that also means the corporation will be dipping into its reserves to make room for contracted pay increases in other areas.
“With respect to this year’s budget, as you can imagine, it was quite a challenge,” Simcoe County chief administrative officer Mark Aitken said during the meeting. “With COVID impacts and trying to align some of the funding we’re receiving in support of COVID, we’ve had a couple of changes in operations.
“Most of the departments have been fairly static,” he added.
As of this week, county staffers told councillors that all the COVID relief funding promised by the provincial and federal governments had been spent in 2020. No promises have yet been made by either government for funding coming in 2021.
County staff used three main resources to avoid having to cut programming to achieve a zero per cent increase, including cutting administrative expenses by $1.5 million.
“We have cut expenses in line with the COVID impact," said Trevor Wilcox, the county's general manager or corporate performance. "We’ve used reserve dollars. We are also using some internal debt.
"We’re basically taking money that we set aside for other things we’re not doing yet and we’re using that to get us down to the zero per cent," he added.
The total COVID impacts to the county, so far, are estimated at around $13.5 million.
The 2021 draft budget contains operating and capital expenditures of $572 million. That amount can be further broken down as follows:
- Paramedic services: $55.6 million
- Long-Term Care – homes: $67.7 million
- Long-Term Care – seniors services: $10.3 million
- General municipal services: $26.5 million
- Administrative and statutory support: $37.8 million
- Planning and economic development: $4.9 million
- Transportation and engineering: $47.6 million
- Solid waste management: $93.8 million
- Forestry: $2 million
- Transit: $6.3 million
- Lake Simcoe Regional Airport: $8.3 million
- Children’s Services: $49.2 million
- Community services: $13.9 million
- Ontario Works: $78.8 million
- Social housing: $68.7 million
Staff proposed 19 new full-time equivalent positions in 2021, which include: four customer service representatives (two permanent and two temporary), one health, safety, benefits and wellness co-ordinator, one director of community programs, one project support resource position, an education co-ordinator for paramedic services, three primary-care paramedic positions, one rotation and workforce analyst position for long-term care, one tenant navigator, and six additional Ontario Works caseworker positions.
A five-month site supervisor position for solid waste management and one senior economic development officer upgrade are also part of the budget, as well as a partial position for an airport equipment operator for the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport.
Barrie and Orillia residents do not pay taxes at the county level, as they are separated cities. Instead, the municipalities allocate a specific amount in their own budget to pay for the use of some county services.
For the separated City of Barrie, its contribution to use some county services (Long Term Care and Seniors Services, Paramedic Services, Children and Community Services, Ontario Works, Social Housing Non-Profit, Simcoe County Housing Corporation, the county museum and archives) comes with a price tag of $26.8 million for 2021, an increase of 7.7 per cent over 2020 budget numbers.
For the separated City of Orillia, its contribution to use county services (Long Term Care and Seniors Services, Paramedic Services, Children and Community Services, Ontario Works, Social Housing Non-Profit and the Simcoe County Housing Corporation) will come with a price tag of $7.7 million for 2021, an increase of 17.9 per cent over 2020.
No decisions were made regarding the 2021 draft budget at the special meeting on Thursday morning.
The draft budget will now be referred to the Nov. 10 committee of the whole meeting for discussion by county councillors.
It will then be put up for ratification at the Nov. 24 regular council meeting.
