By Pepper Parr
October 28th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Nothing smaller about the Mayor’s 2025 budget.
The 2024 version was 780+ pages; the 2025 version is 615 pages – the tax increase over last year is 8.3%
The city will tell you that the “impact” is going to be – but they don’t define just what an impact is.
The only number the city controls is that top line – Burlington – that is the tax increase as a %. In real dollars it was 464.27 for 2024 and is expected to be $499.10 for every $100,000 of property assessment. In three separate articles, we are going to hone in on Digital services; Storm Water Management and Parks.
Before we do the deep dive – some statistics the city features in the 2025 Budget Book.
Here is where the Finance department and the Communications department fail to fully inform the taxpayers.
The shell game. The guy with the walnut shells – take that to be the city – wins every time.
It’s a shell game, the type of thing you see on the streets of poorer neighbourhoods in major American cities.
If you have the assessment value of your home at your fingers – you will know what your tax bill is going to be.
The city will tell you how much money they are going to collect in the way of taxes – but they don’t show you a comparison of what they collected the previous year. So you don’t know what the tax increase is. You do know that the taxes for 2025 is $45.66 for every $100,000 of urban residential assessment. The assessed value of two houses side by side is usually different.
I’m disgusted by this. Whose income can keep pace with these annual increases? This council needs to go.
If our taxes continue to rise at a rapid rate, are we cutting down on all of the grants that we give to a large number of groups in the city? It seems only fair that if my taxes go up a certain percentage then the grant payout should drop, because we cannot afford it. At some point in time, and now seems perfect, these giveaways need to diminish or stop all together.
Tony the vast number of opinions on these grants that we have heard is they should all be gone.
Scott Radley article in today ‘s Spec shows Horwath has an entirely different approach to our strong Mayor.taking into consideration the tough times taxpayers are having. We need a different Mayor folks who does the job she was elected to do – represent the taxpayers and act in their best interests in a transparent manner – hopefully we are going to hear this repeatedly stated at the council/committee lectern over the next little while.
The repetitive delegations are necessary when our council appears to wear blinders and sound cancelling headphones when considering public input.