There are ways to come in with a lower tax rate - Council doesn't appear to be interested

By Pepper Parr

October 28^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

The 2026 proposed budget has been released online.

The Gazette will have a printed version in hand later today – it runs to more than 500 pages.

The finance department still gets a little silly with the way they report what the tax increase will amount to.

Rather than clearly explain to the public that the city collects taxes for the Region and the School boards, and for the city.  And that it has no responsibility for what the Region or the School Board spend (with the exception that Burlington has seven votes at the 27 member Regional Council) But that it is responsible for what it spends and has to collect taxes for CITY services.

5.8% is the city tax increase

4.49% is the number you get if you include what is being collected for the School boards and the Region

People get confused with the information they send out– this practice is right up there with the “dog ate my homework” explanation.

Financial staff come across as looking a little sketchy rather than professional.

City spending is broken into two parts: Operating money – the cost of running the numerous services, which the city is very reluctant to reduce – they don’t want to offend anyone.

Capital expenditures: These are funds that are set aside to replace an asset when it is no longer meeting the need it was built for or if it is cheaper to rebuild rather than repair.  The finance people explain that this way: “To ensure our assets do not deteriorate further, the City needs to invest $1.22B (that’s billions) over the next 10 years in infrastructure renewal. Currently we are spending $868M over 10 years.

While important – moving planned capital expenditure back a year, maybe two, doesn’t mean the world is going to end.

Burlington is at one of those awkward financial stages.

Hundreds of developments have been approved – but they aren’t being built.  The market just isn’t ready to pay the price.

People want to buy housing that is affordable – problem is there isn’t enough of it.  And bankers are being very tight with mortgages.

Built 50 years ago, the structure is thought to have reached its life span. The roof was repaired recently.

We will have more detail once we have gone through the budget book, but an example we can give you is the plan, in the not-too-distant future, to build a new Seniors’ Centre.   Admittedly, space is getting tight – the lunch room is close to capacity many days.  There is room to expand that space.

The city takes the view that the building has reached the end of its life cycle (it was built 50 years ago) and needs to be replaced.  Significant sums are being spent on planning for a new Seniors’ Centre, with funds set aside now to build what might be needed at some future date

The city model is to create an asset, give it a life span and budget for a replacement once the life span has been reached.  The city sets aside funds in a reserve account to in order to have the money needed when the asset has to be replaced.

In the private sector, assets are repaired and upgraded as often as possible and only replaced when they can no longer do the job.

The city is a corporation, but it doesn’t have a balance sheet or a Profit and Loss Statement.  People with strong private sector experience struggle to understand how municipal finances work.

Much more to come on the Capital Spending.