By Pepper Parr
May 24th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
Joan Ford, the Director of Finance for the city got dealt a bad hand and now has to juggle like crazy to keep the city financially stable
Ms Ford collects the taxes – all the taxes. She collects the city property taxes, the Boards of Education taxes and the Regional government taxes.
Director of Finance Joan Ford does a great job of providing the data; her department does a good job of collecting the taxes as well.
At predetermined times of the year she sends the appropriate portion of the taxes levied to the people they were collected on behalf of; she has to send them the tax that was levied – even if she didn’t collect it.
Ms Ford explains that “it isn’t all that hard to do because in Burlington the city is able to collect 98% of the taxes levied. In any given year, we are required to remit the amount of taxes levied to the region and the boards of education, regardless of whether all of the taxes have been collected.
For this reason, municipalities that collect the taxes are able to charge penalty and interest to assist with cash flows regarding the non-payment of property taxes.
Historically, the City of Burlington has an excellent property tax collection record, approximately 98% of the taxes levied are collected in the current year.
Joan Ford, the city’s Director of Finance knows where every dollar comes from and where every dollar gets spent.
As part of a presentation Ms Ford recently made to committee/council, she included cash flow projections which consider all payments out ( payroll & property tax remittances) as well as revenues in (property tax collection. The projected June 30th cash flow position is estimated at $20.6M after making the Region of Halton tax remittance of $33.4M for the April installment share of taxes levied.
“The next school board remittance payment is scheduled for Sept 30th deferred from June 30th. The deferral of the property tax remittances by the Region and the Province (for education taxes) has certainly assisted given delayed tax collection for the months of April through June as well as delayed final billing due dates” added Ms Ford.
This is financial juggling at its best.
