MANITOWANING—At a special Assiginack council meeting last week, a motion to pass this year’s budget with a nine percent increase was defeated.
“I don’t like the budget, but we can’t afford to offer the same services we do with the same budget that we have,” stated Mayor Brenda Reid, at last week’s meeting.
“I agree,” said Councillor Dwayne Elliott. “I’m not happy with the budget, but unless we make significant cuts to programs or jobs, I can’t see having any decrease.”
Both Mayor Reid and Councillor Elliott noted a previous two percent increase in last year’s budget, is the only increase that previous councils have made over the past 12 years.
Mayor Reid put forward a motion to accept the budget with a nine percent increase, with Councillor Elliot seconding the motion. However, with Councillors Jennifer Hooper and Janice Bowerman voting in opposition, the nine percent increase proposed, was defeated. Councillor Rob Maguire did not attend the meeting held last week.
Earlier in the meeting, council discussed the budget and where potential decreases could be made so the budget would not arrive at nine percent.
Councillors discussed cancelling donations it has made to several groups in the past, including the Assiginack Curling Club, Manitoulin Secondary School robotics team and Manitoulin Streams Improvement Association (MSIA).
It was pointed out the curling club has not paid taxes to the township for about 10 years.
Mayor Reid indicated the curling club “is asking for a donation, but because it is a private club it is like asking for a subsidy. I don’t think we should be subsidizing their taxes with taxes paid by other local taxpayers.”
It was pointed out that rental rates of township owned buildings have not increased over the past two terms of council. However, the township is planning to increase all rental rates by 10 percent next year.
Councillor Bowerman suggested that the township could look at the BMO/Canada Post office that the township sold last year, and use the reserve funds, approximately $231,000 and what the township has put forward for many years in small incremental funds.
As for the idea of using reserves to bring the increase down, Mayor Reid and Councillor Elliott said they are not opposed to using reserves for capital, but not for offsetting the operation of the budget.
“When we are talking about reserves, it is important to have healthy reserves when we need things like a new fire truck or snowplow,” said Mayor Reid. “But not to take anything out of reserves willy nilly to make the tax increases artificially lower. If you keep chipping away at reserves every year, pretty soon you won’t have them in place when something is desperately needed. I am sorry and hate to see a tax increase of nine percent, I don’t think our reserves are extravagant, but we just can’t find the savings we need.”
“I would like to see spending in each department in the township decreased by five percent,” said Councillor Bowerman. “If we give department heads a direction, to cut five percent from their budgets, they will, and we wouldn’t be looking at the need for a 9-10 percent tax increase.”
“I am not thrilled with a nine percent tax increase,” said Councillor Hooper, saying that cuts need to be made so this increase will not be felt by local ratepayers.
On reserves, Councillor Hooper said there are lot of issues on buildings we have. The Roller Mills building needs to be addressed, and pilings are sitting out of the water on the waterfront that need to be remediated.
“For many years the township has not been raising taxes when it should have,” said Mayor Reid. “I hate a nine percent increase, but this is where we are.”
“I would like to know how many roads in the township that don’t need to be hardtopped in the near future,” said Councillor Elliott. “Bidwell Road is in fantastic shape, but I wonder for some of the other roads that are not as busy if they need to be tar and chipped.”
“There would be no problem asking the roads superintendent for a report on this,” said CAO Alton Hobbs.
“A nine or 10 percent increase is extreme,” stated Councillor Bowerman.
There was discussion of selling properties the town owns through tax sales. However, Mr. Hobbs explained, “we receive properties that are a problem, for example, they may not have a legal access to the property and people want open road allowances so they can get access to a property and build on it. We can post on our website the properties we have and if someone has an idea for development of them. We can at least put a list together of these properties and post them.”
“We would have to find $18,000 in savings to bring the tax increase to eight percent,” said Councillor Hooper. “Maybe we can look at all this again. During the COVID years no one wanted to raise taxes, and last year we raised taxes a small amount. Now we are in a position that we are looking at a big jump in taxes. I think we need to have everyone on hand, all members of council to provide input, to see if we can bring this down.”
“I don’t think we will get this all settled tonight,” said Councillor Hooper. “We need to have all councillors around the table to discuss this. If we are looking at this type of increase, we need everyone, all councillors present,” she said noting that Councillor Maguire had a previous commitment, prior to being informed of last week’s meeting, and so could not attend.
“I agree, I would like Rob’s input before we pass the budget,” said Councillor Bowerman.
(Previous) council should have increased the budget to what the township needed. Even the two percent increase last year was not enough to cover everything that needed to be, said Mayor Reid. “I am not going to vote if we are looking at taking anything out of our reserves.”
It was also noted that there have been significant increases to all municipalities from services the province mandates they need to contribute to, such as public health, policing, district service board and education.
“We are not looking at increasing services, just maintaining everything that has been in place the last five-six years,” said Councillor Elliott.
These mandated services and costs, make up about three or four percent of the proposed nine percent budget increase.
Council was to meet again this past Monday to continue its budget deliberations.
