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Town business continues: TBM passes 2020 budget

'People have asked, 'how can you pass the budget when you don’t know what the reality of this new world will be?' Good point,' says Councillor Rob Sampson
2020_02_18 BM Town Council_JG
The Town of the Blue Mountains council met in council chambers at town hall in early February for budget deliberations. Jennifer Golletz/CollingwoodToday

Despite being in the midst of a global pandemic, the Town of the Blue Mountains (TBM) council has passed its 2020 draft budget.

“People have asked, 'how can you pass the budget when you don’t know what the reality of this new world will be?' Good point. But, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a budget to at least move forward with,” said TBM councillor Rob Sampson. “We have to have some guidelines and rules to allow staff to proceed. Even in this uncertain time and certainly going forward as we exit out of this.”

Ruth Prince, director of finance for the TBM presented the 2020 draft budget to the TBM town council on March 30 during a virtual council meeting.

“We have been working on this budget for many, many months, and it has been available to the public on the TBM website since Jan. 10,” Prince said.

The Blue Mountains 2020 budget includes a $16,572,926 local property tax levy and a $36.3 million capital budget. 

The 2020 tax rate represents a decrease of 4.27 per cent for 2020. This decrease is due to a larger increase in the weighted assessment versus the increase in the tax levy. 

The average property owner may see an increase of 1.80 per cent on their phased-in assessment. However, with the proposed tax rate, the average home assessed at $645,000 may see the town portion of their property tax bill decrease by $73. 

A residential tax bill for a property assessed at $600,000 in 2020 would be approximately $5,328, a decrease of $71 over 2019.

Throughout the budget discussion, councillors acknowledged that the world is a very different place since the final budget meetings were held in early February, but insisted in moving forward with the pre-COVID-19 budget as outlined.

“The times are uncertain and the budget gives staff, council and the public some certainty as to what our intentions are for this year. We may have to make changes, but, I agree we need to move forward with this to give us some certainty in these unsure times,” said TBM deputy mayor Rob Potter.

Mayor Alar Soever agreed with the councillors despite being absent from many of the final budget meetings. Soever recently returned from medical leave March 23.

“I am happy to support this,” Soever said. “Let’s move forward and once we have some clarity as to how long this crisis is going to last, then we can make decisions regarding changes as they come. We are still in the early stages of this COVID crisis. Grey and Bruce County sat at four [lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases] for a long time and over the weekend it went up to 10. We are just starting to climb up the curve and we don’t know how long it is going to last.”

Soever says that council and town staff are well aware that they will likely see losses to the expected 2020 town revenue.

“We have already lost some rentals from shutting down the ice rink early, so we know that we are going to be short some funds there,” Soever said. “The situation is going to look a lot different a month from now. What we have done is basically accept that there will be changes coming.”

Council also discussed the impact COVID-19 will likely have on the town’s 2020 capital project plans, noting that funding, timelines and the availability of materials for the projects will all likely be affected.

“This will be difficult for all of us. We are going to have to change some of the plans we had going forward,” Sampson said. “Senior management has been, and will be asked to look at the budget items for savings so that we can have that reserve capacity available to help local businesses and local individuals as we prepare to exit this COVID clampdown that we are facing.”

Approval of the 2020 TBM draft budget was carried. In addition, town staff have been asked to provide reports to council prior to proceeding with any capital projects, plans or studies with a price tag over $50,000.

“Any purchases or hires, we want reports,” Soever said. “And with those reports, we will be modifying the budget as we go along.”


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Jennifer Golletz

About the Author: Jennifer Golletz

Jennifer Golletz covers civic matters under the Local Journalism Initative, which is funded by the Government of Canada
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