Kincardine council received a budget plan report from municipal staff this week.
“Everything that has been provided in the report is based on the existing service levels and the cost to continue providing the services that we are already providing the community,” says Director of Corporate Services Roxana Baumann.
Some services are expected to increase in expense, and have an impact on the budget.
“The additional information that we have is respect to the additional policing costs, so we receive a 2025 OPP policing costs for next year, and it’s projected to increase by $268,000, and the impact of that is 1.37%,” she explained to council as they discussed the projected increase at the time of her report, which was 8.17%.
Baumann also added that some changes would already impact the projected tax rate increase, saying, “Proceeding with the 2024 market study, the impact of that is $270,000, and that’s a 1.38% so if I was to re-create this template today, it would not be 8.17%, it would be a starting point of 10.88%. So that would be my request to council: is that understanding what the factors a
Most members of council agreed that the target increase for the municipality’s tax rate should be between 6 and 8 percent.
Councillor Jennifer Prenger says that although the municipality has received survey feedback of people wanting to reduce services to save money, that she has been receiving the opposite feedback when she meets people in person.
“I struggle to reconcile those two things at the moment. I think that at this point in our term, I’m hoping councillors are a little more comfortable with being a little more assertive and actually looking at our services and trying to figure out how we can be more efficient or effective in order to save some costs so we don’t have to reduce the services themselves but really do them more effectively.”
She says that while council made some creative changes to reduce last year’s projected tax increase, it came at a cost, including not contributing to the Asset Management Fund.
“I also agree that the 3% for asset management fund is very important, it was a struggle not to put it in last year, so I think we need to do it, and I think we need to get creative this year,” she said.
Council also approved the 2025 wage increase for municipal employees, which is an increase of 2.5% based on inflation and market changes.
The consensus around the council table was to contribute the 3% toward the Asset Management fund, which was not done last year.
Council then directed staff to find any proposed service level reductions or expansions for 2025.
Budget Plan Report is intended to provide preliminary budget information for Council’s awareness and to any changes that may impact the 2025 budget.
The proposed budget meeting dates for Kincardine are:
– First budget meeting December 10, 2024, 9:00 am–2:00 pm
– Second budget meeting January 13, 2025, 9:00 am – 2:00 pm
– Third budget meeting January 27, 2025, 9:00 am – 2:00 pm
– Budget adoption February 12, 2025