City’s 2018 budget a bit of a balancing act

Peterborough taxpayers can take some comfort in knowing their annual tax increases have become predictable.

For 2018 city council is considering a 2.85 per cent increase. If that’s the final number it will represent the average increase for the three most recent budgets, up a bit from last year and down a bit from the year before.

That’s an acceptable balancing act. Increases have been kept to slightly above the rate of inflation while needed spending on road, sewer and bridge repairs has ramped up significantly.

The hard numbers in the draft 2018 budget read like this: $270 million in operating spending, $85 million in capital spending and a $3,939 tax bill for the owner of an average home. Average is considered to be an assessed tax value of $243,000.

Capital spending continues to be the most significant indicator of city policy.

In the seven years since he was first elected Mayor Daryl Bennett has bee nona drive to take advantage of low borrowing costs to catch up on a backlog of infrastructure work. Pre-Bennett, capital spending was generally in the $40-$50 million range. Now $80 million or more has become the norm.

Financing the work with 10- and 20-year debentures at low, locked-in rates makes that surge manageable.

Another notable line item in the draft budget is a 2.4 per cent increase in the police budget, higher than the 1.7 per cent cap imposed on all other city departments. (The overall tax increase includes a dedicated capital spending amount and specialty items like the sewer surcharge.)

The fact that a higher – but not too much higher – police increase is built into the budget suggests bitter annual fights between council (and Bennett in particular) and the police might actually be a thing of the past.

The significant new wrinkle for 2018 is another of those “specialty items.” This one is a dedicated tax that will pay for stormwater (AKA flood) control.

Or it might be. On Tuesday council rejected the stormwater surcharge by a 6-5 vote.

The surcharge would have cost an average homeowner $14 next year and was included in the overall 2.85 per cent tax hike.

It was rejected for a number of reasons, but the deciding vote came from Coun. Dean Pap pas whose ward includes downtown.

The surcharge is related to runoff from driveways and parking lots. The higher percentage of concrete and asphalt that pushes rainwater into the sewer system the more a property owner pays. Pappas argued it unfairly targets owners who can’t do anything about the fact that downtown is all hard surface and no grass.

He seems to have a point. The surcharge would bring in $620,000 next year but city officials hope to see a tenfold increase over time. An average business would then pay $1,500 a year.

However, the same is true for business owners outside downtown. Downtown businesses actually get a break since most of their paved parking space is in municipal lots and garages.

The $620,000 could be raised with a general tax increase but that would kill the innovative and progressive element of a surcharge: an incentive for property owners to cut costs by taking measures to reduce runoff and thereby contribute to flood control.

The surcharge might have to be tweaked but it should be adopted.