By Pepper Parr
January 7, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
With some research in hand, we can now report what tax increases for Burlington residents look like.
The percentages show the increase in total tax revenue as shown in each year’s approved budget.
Using the year-over-year tax increase, the cumulative numbers comes in at an astounding 65.10%
Taxes shown for each year and the cumulative increase shown as a bar chart. It’s more dramatic in this format
That is not a sustainable number.
Where does the money?
The graphs below tell part of the story.
The blue line shows the total budget amounts, from 2017 to 2025, for the City of Burlington. The orange line shows the 2017 budget amount adjusted for inflation through 2025. The increase in spending over inflation is $104,585,854 or 28% (2017 to 2025) while population growth over the same period is approximately 6%.
This graph shows the year-over-year and cumulative taxes set out above as a table. The trajectory of the two in this graph is certainly unsustainable—it could be described as terrifying if it continued.
Human Resources budget for 2025
Burlington is not the only city facing budget pressures – its happening across the province. However, some municipalities have reached for their boot straps and pulled hard.
Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens
The City of Windsor told property owners they will have to pay roughly three per cent more in municipal taxes this year if city council adopts a “challenging” budget containing staff cuts tabled by Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens
By identifying revenue sources and finding reductions — the details of which the mayor remained mum — council and city staff reduced the projected tax hike from 12.9 per cent announced in the fall to 2.99 per cent, or roughly $14.5 million.
Asked what costs the mayor’s budget proposes to eliminate, Dilkens said, “There’s a lot of in-camera work, because it involves, in some cases, some staff reductions in certain areas. It would be unfair of me to get ahead of city council having an opportunity to read it.”
Dilkens said it “isn’t a slash-and-burn budget,” adding that there’s “no need to set off any fireworks until we get to the end of the process and understand exactly where it is that we’re going.” If council keeps the mayor’s budget as is, the city’s operating budget will grow to $499.6 million, with an additional $312.7 million in capital spending in 2025.
Although the budget proposes to cut some jobs, it also proposes a net addition of 26 full-time positions.
In September, Dilkens warned Windsor property owners they could see the highest levy hike in two decades for 2025. A preliminary review of financial pressures revealed taxes could soar by nearly 13 per cent if council failed to find things to chop from the operating budget.
One Windsor Council member called that a “jaw-dropper,” The number was reduced to roughly six per cent by mid-November after further staff review and work by three council budget committees set up to find savings in various city departments.
One wonders if Burlington’s City Council members even know what bootstraps are.
It’s a fair question: Has the council that is close to serving two terms served the community? They think they have – the tax evidence challenges that thinking.
The evidence:
I have become somewhat sceptical concerning how Burlington citizens appear to be accepting a series of events and disclosures that, normally, should cause serious civic unrest. BRAG’s revelation that the cumulative tax increase under the Meed Ward administration exceeds 67% is a case in point. Where is the righteous indignation and call to action that should be the natural result?
The quality of the responses to BRAG’s 14 questions and the apparent failure to entertain any citizen budget-related proposals underlies an organizational cynicism that permeates City Hall. Staff seem to be openly complicit in a regime of quite transparent misinformation and deliberate deflections. A rather telling example is the Mayor’s January Newsletter.
In it, she provides her perspective on 2024 and it is an interesting read. I wonder occasionally whether we inhabit the same city – we certainly have very different views on what she positions as accomplishments and positive directions. But the clearest and most appalling example of blatant self-interest is Council’s decision that its size and composition will remain the same. For those who are unaware, Burlington has the highest ratio of population to Councillors of any tier 2 municipality in Ontario – and by a very large margin. This is made even more alarming by the fact that these six Councillors and Mayor (seven individuals) also carry the duties (and the salaries) of Regional Councillors – unlike any of the other Halton municipalities. And the six Ward Councillors also have functional portfolios as Deputy Mayors; a fact that never escapes the mention of Councillor Nisan. So, is Burlington’s Council so effective, so efficient that it can carry a workload that no other municipality can bear? Do they not sleep?
Practically and with the travesty of Strong Mayor powers aside, this means that only 4 people can determine the particulars of life for almost 200,000 people, with much anticipated future growth. And, given the opportunity to reform, reshape and rationalize a governance model that has been in place for over 16 years and that will not accommodate future demographics, why would they stand on the ‘status quo’? To be flippant, when you allow the monkeys to decide the size of the barrel, they’ll pick that which can hold the most bananas.
It’s a manifest case of self over public interest. Meed Ward is the highest paid Mayor in Ontario – again, by a healthy margin. Do her responsibilities and span of control exceed those of the Mayor of Mississauga? The six members of her ‘horse shoe table retinue’ double dip in the public trough. Their fiefdoms are accordingly the richest in the land. And we, the serfs, sit quietly by as they determine that no improvements are needed, that the pie will be carved exactly as before. And they contend that we have been involved in the decision, engaged by virtue of yet another survey (the contemporary version of a 15th century public notice nailed to a commons post). A review of Ward boundaries is apparently the next step. On its face, this would seem to be an attempt to equalize workload and make the challenges of representation more even. But I strongly expect that this is simply gerrymandering and that it will be used to advance the political aspirations of the Queen’s palace guard, Councillors Galbraith and Nisan.
Blair, from Hamlet with creative license, alas poor citizens of Burlington, I thought I knew you well. As to Yorick, he was corrupted by the mist. And now from A Tale of Two Cities, as to Burlington and again with poetic license, the tax era before 2018 was the best of times and it is now the worst of times. As to 2025. It is not the age of wisdom.
Some great comments here and it’s refreshing to see responses from citizens about this abuse. It’s obvious that changes are required at City Hall ….. like they should all resign in shame.
A 65% tax increase cannot be a policy—it represents a significant financial shift that will directly impact every resident and business in this city for years ….. the leaders own it and should suffer the fallout.
Let’s keep making noise and getting people involved so we can dismiss this group.
Did Nisan resign yet ??
Vote Council and the Mayor out at the earliest convenience. We need cuts, freezes, efficiencies, not endless high tax increases. You just don’t see anything like these from year to year. These elitists just don’t get it. Our Burlington City Council reminds me of the Federal Liberals who have run our finances into the ground; that’s why they hit us with un-sustainable tax increases year after year. This is a classic case of financial mismanagement and out of touch politicians. They are bleeding its citizens dry and they are mean SOB’s.
The police chief steve tanner increase in pay of xxx is the reason an xxxxx Chief who takes vacations during COVID with his xxxxxxxxxx and avoids the media.
Editor’s note: Were I to publish you comment – are you prepared to pay my legal costs when Tanner sues me for libel?
During the recent budget consultations the Mayor repeatedly referenced the document as “my budget”. BRAG will make sure those words come back to haunt her in 2026. If she owns the budget then, de facto, she also owns the 65.1% increase….and all the waste and misuse of revenue that Caren has identified that goes along with it.
This is shocking news! The type of factual revelation that should ‘blow the doors off City Hall’ and lay waste to the aspirations and political futures of its inhabitants. But where’s the noise??
More than six hours after this article was posted there are only two comments – both from current or past members of BRAG (or its predecessor). So, from a general citizen perspective their comments don’t really count.
Ummm this is a deafening response (or lack thereof) of quite another sort. Do people in Burlington really not care? Has BRAG overplayed its hand? Are people just too fatigued and too disillusioned by their apparent lack of voice in any governance forum? Whatever the case, it does not augur well for us.
Oh, and I have a BRAG predecessor association as well. So, my comment doesn’t count either.
The declining birth rate Worldwide is the driver of geopolitical economics at present, and will be for at least the next thirty years; The Boomer Generation is the largest and wealthiest in the history of the West with the U.S, being the wealthiest, the youngest of this cohort is about 55 years old at present with the oldest being in their 90s, so we are currently in the transition stage; GDP in the West is being driven by services, not manufacturing. I won’t go into the details here but you can apply these facts to decisions being made at home and abroad; They can range from Trump’s ‘Fortress America’ to China’s coupling with Russia to Europe scrambling for a coherent solution of being in the middle, and Canada’s governments at every level increasing there headcount for domestic and Immigrants alike, with the Boomers footing the bill for the groundwork of what that future will look like; Is our Mayor strategically planning for that future or is she just redecorating and stocking up on toilet rolls.
Council more or less do what they want be because we elected them and not someone who takes spending our hard earned taxes seriously. There is no idea or request that isnt good enough for them to spend more of our investment dollars.
This 65.10% Tax Increase over 6 years is absolutely appalling !!
Our Property Taxes began going up as soon as this current Mayor and Council took office in October 2018. So these increases are on them period.
Our Mayor and Council continue to spend money like drunken sailors!!
They have spent millions and millions of dollars on numerous items and projects that were not needed or necessary and all done without residents input or approval. Too many to mention here.
i e Bateman, Skyway Arena, Food For Feedback, Love Your Neighbour, multi coloured Cross walks, speed bumps everywhere, handouts to various businesses and organizations, millions on Art pieces and commissions of Art for public spaces, $10.000.00 dollar grants for Neighbourhood projects etc. etc.
The COB pays for numerous Surveys, but all of these Surveys are either ignored or not reported accurately.
Many Residents delegate before council meetings regularly regarding property taxes and overspending, and suggest and provide ways to reduce costs, including volunteering their time and expertise, but our Mayor and City Council dismisses them.
Our Mayor and Council do what they want, when they should be representing the constituents of Burlington who put them there in the first place!!