By Pepper Parr
October 30th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
The residential tax bill is made up of three components: City of Burlington (51%), Region of Halton (32%) and School Board (17%). Council’s deliberations will focus on the city portion, as school board tax rates are established by the province, and Halton Region tax rates are decided by Halton Regional Council (where Burlington City Council makes up 7 of the 24 members).
The 2024 Financial Needs and Multi-year Forecast overview prepared by staff would require an increase of 6.28% to the city’s portion of the tax bill. Including the Region of Halton at 1.33% and no change to education. The total potential tax impact to residents would have been 7.61%.
The Mayor’s budget proposes a 4.99% tax increase to the city’s portion of the residential tax bill. Including the Region of Halton and education portions the total proposed 2024 Mayor’s budget results in a total tax impact to residents of 6.33%.
The Mayor’s document was just 10 pages long.
We will go through it in detail later in the day – at this point she did manage to reduce what the public is going to be expected to pay in city taxes. If that holds true – give her credit for pulling it off.
Please look back to the article on July 31, 2023, in the Gazette, where I predicted City Council would ask, once again, for a ridiculous tax increase for 2024. After tax payers absorbed over 7% last year – one of the highest in Ontario, and due to gross mismanagement. one would have thought City Council would have got the message. Burlington residents are demanding a rate increase of approx 3% and not a penny more. Surely efficiencies must be found and cuts now before demanding such high tax increases yet again. At a time of high inflation and high interest rates, City Council must stop its addiction on spending on wages and City Hall Reno’s. At the same time, cost over-runs on the Skyway Arena project and the Bateman/Brock boondoggle are examples of vanity projects poorly thought out and timed. Here is the message City Councillors: stop pissing money away and expect residents to pay for your vanity projects, year after year. Time for cuts, cuts, cuts.
Jim thanks for the laugh. If you don’t laugh you’ll cry.
I’m watching the live stream of the council meeting. Lori Jivand the city’s budget coordinator presented. Her power point has the word impact in it, as in total impact to our total tax bill. When she speaks, she uses the word increase. In this context increase is twice impact.
I have a background music suggestion for this council meeting – Supertramp’s the crime of the century.
Our transparent and open local government switched from increase to impact starting with the 2023 budget process.
As this article states the City only controls the City’s portion of the budget. The billing is combined (City, Region, School Board) just like our electricity and water bills are combined. It’s just easier to bill people once. The City is increasing it’s portion by 10.21% on top of last years 13.73%. The “impact” (the word the mayor uses) of the City’s increase on the total is 4.99% so the Mayor is able to present a rosier picture than reality. If Burlington Hydro raised electricity rates by 10% and our water bill was roughly the same as our Hydro bill would anyone believe we only had a 5% increase to our Hydro every second month?
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
I’m sure old Humpty Dumpty would have also blamed the media for headlines if Wonderland actually had media.
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For anyone doubting my statements of a 10.21% tax increase take a look at how Oakville presents their budget. I guess people in Oakvegas are smarter than us Burlington folks and can understand better more stuff in their budget document. Note the inclusion of an increase column to the left of the impact column Slide 15 – https://pub-oakville.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=61123
Burlington has only utilized about 50% of their jurisdictional ability to borrow. I recommend that the City increase borrowing to pay for provincial downloading by reducing development fees so that the “future” residents of the tens of thousands of approximately 550 SF condo’s can pay for the necessary infrastructure City upgrades. Burlington is aged community. Many of our seniors are on fixed income and should not be expected to fund new arrivals.
Glad to hear Mayor has reduced City taxes I heard that Burlington Property taxes are going up over 13%. Is this true?