City, county at odds over waste control funding
Officials optimistic on finding solution to funding dispute by September meeting
A dispute over funding has forced Windsor and Essex County’s top leaders to hash out their differing opinions on how to finance and govern the Essex Windsor Solid Waste Authority’s operations.
Months after the waste authority board, with its current majority of Windsor councillors, passed 2017 and 2018 budgets and Essex County Council subsequently refused to approve them, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens and Essex County Warden Tom Bain met to see if a compromise could be found.
Bain and Dilkens talked Wednesday afternoon, along with their respective CAOs Brian Gregg and Onorio Colucci, and although no agreement was reached they both said they were optimistic a resolution would be forged by the next board meeting in September.
“I think we’ve got some ideas that we’re mulling through and I think we’re getting closer,” Dilkens said.
Earlier this year, board members voted five to three to adopt the budgets — both with a zero per cent increase to the municipal assessment amounts.
The vote shows Windsor councillors Rino Bortolin, Ed Sleiman, Jo-Anne Gignac, Fred Francis and Hilary Payne voted in favour while Essex County representatives Ken Antaya, Ron McDermott, Hilda MacDonald voted against. Bain was absent from the meeting.
Waste authority general manager Eli Maodus said administration had recommended a 4.11 per cent increase for 2017 on a proposed budget that has total operating, perpetual care and capital expenditures of $26,867,510 and total revenue projections of $26,545,489.
With the 4.11 per cent increase, which represented a revenue increase of $453,000, there would have been a projected $322,020 deficit.
Because the board approved a zero per cent increase, the deficit is anticipated to be $775,000 for the year and that money would have to come from the rate stabilization reserve fund, which had a balance at the end of 2016 of $14.4 million.
“To maintain that zero increase, it (means) taking money out of the reserves to the point where, should that continue, there’d be no reserves,” Bain said. “In the future you’re gonna have a hit that’s going to be double figured to the residents. I think we’re just looking at preparing for the future.”
Dilkens said city council is cognizant of the amount in the reserve and there just might be a difference of opinion in respect to what that amount should be in order to have a healthy amount moving forward.
The mayors made that part of Wednesday’s conversation. “We’re going to have to come up with that bottom line of how much do we need in reserves to work safely and how much can we continue to draw out to help keep the increase down,” Bain said. “There’s details that we’ve still got to work out.”
Maodus said for the authority budget to get final approval, it needs to be passed by both county council and Windsor city council. County council did not approve the zero per cent budget so it was not brought before Windsor council “as it would have been redundant to do so.”
But the question of whether the board could pass a two-year budget was also brought up at the waste authority meeting. Antaya voiced his opposition to adopting a budget for 2018, saying it was not advertised that the board was going to deliberate on a budget for 2018 and that the composition of the board would change next year.
Maodus also pointed out the operating agreement for the authority references annual budget approval.
These governance issues were part of the discussion between Bain and Dilkens.
“The two real issues in my mind relate to the budget and the number in the budget and the second issue relates to governance,” Dilkens said. “So how to actually govern the authority and making sure that we’re streamlining and finding some ways to deal with some of the annoyances that we’ve had.”