City’s draft budget at 1.62% tax increase
St. Catharines council will vote on a 2018 city budget with a proposed 1.62 per cent tax increase that has no service cuts and keeps summer students employed with minimum wage bumps.
City staff and the standing budget committee have shaved the draft 2018 operating budget from a 2.77 per cent hike presented by staff on Oct. 2 to inflationary rates.
The proposed budget will be tabled at council’s meeting on Dec. 11 and debated at a special meeting set for Dec. 18.
“This was probably the toughest year in terms of just the amount of information we requested, but the committee worked really well together,” said budget chair Mat Siscoe.
The committee, comprising six city councillors, passed the draft budget on Nov. 29 unanimously.
“All of us were in agreement staff had done the hard work and they achieved what we asked them to achieve,” Siscoe said. “I’m pretty proud of staff and the committee for getting this done as quickly as they did with as many meetings as we did.
“We’ll see how things work on the 18th but I’m hopeful for a unanimous vote going into 2018.”
The committee heard in October that the province’s plan to increase minimum wage would be the largest driver impacting the 2018 budget. The hike in wages, mainly affecting summer students working in parks, will cost the city an extra $437,433 — a 0.47 per cent increase in expenditures.
But Siscoe said residents were clear during the budget committee’s Oct. 25 telephone town hall that they were in favour of extra costs for student workers.
“The minimum wage increase is probably the single biggest thing that’s increasing the budget this year and the expenditures,” Siscoe said. “Residents were pretty clear that if that was the case, they were willing to have that expenditure go up because they felt it was important to offer those employment opportunities.”
The budget committee and staff found more than $460,000 in savings from the original draft budget, such as deferring $35,000 in esthetic improvements to fire halls and removing $17,500 for trafficcalming measures because there was still close to $60,000 unspent from previous budgets for them.
This is the first year the committee is aiming to have a budget passed by council before year’s end. In the past, city departments have access to the new budget dollars on Jan. 1 but the budget itself isn’t debated and passed until February or March.
The committee moved up the schedule so it will be easier for staff to plan their upcoming year and know how much they have to spend.
“This is a great change and a positive step forward for the city and our financial planning,” said Kristine Douglas, director of financial management services and city treasurer.
Douglas said senior management worked together as a team to come up with different options for the committee to achieve a median home increase of 1.62 per cent. Since the draft budget was presented on Oct. 2, she said there were 23 changes, five additions and 18 revisions.
The change in schedule meant city staff actually prepared two budgets over the past 12 months — the 2017 one for February and the 2018 one for December.
“I’m extremely proud of all of the staff here and all of their hard work and commitment, because staff did have to work very hard over the summer months in order for us to be sitting with a budget ready for council to consider on Dec. 18.”
City council passed an operating budget with a 3.06 per cent city tax increase in 2017. The draft 2018 budget will be available on the city’s website Friday.