About 50 Collingwood residents gathered on Nov. 20 at the Collingwood Public Library to give council and town staff their thoughts on the draft 2025 Collingwood budget as part of a Coffee with Council event.
The task proved difficult, however, as the town still hasn’t made the full budget document publicly available.
“I haven’t had a chance to read it in detail. We couldn’t find the budget online,” said Jeanette Beck, one of the attendees. “I spent two hours this afternoon looking for it.”
However, Beck said it was great to see the number of people in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting.
“This is important,” she said. “There’s a saying that we borrow this world from our children. When we look at tax increases...we don’t want to burden the next generation and the future of the town. All expenses go up.”
The first draft of the 2025 Collingwood budget considers an 8.94-per-cent tax hike. Operating budget resource requests for 2025 in the first draft total $2,681,766.
At their first meeting to discuss the budget on Nov. 13, councillors managed to trim a few items and staff noted at that meeting there were a few miscalculations that would be corrected for future drafts.
At Wednesday’s Coffee with Council event, town treasurer Jennifer Graham noted that those two changes will likely bring the overall tax increase down by almost 1.5 per cent (or $614,000) for the second draft.
With an 8.94 per cent increase, if approved, taxes would amount to $45.3 million of the town’s overall budget next year. In 2024, the entire budget accounted for $142.7 million in town spending total. Of that, $39.6 million was raised through taxes.
“It’s a big number,” said Larry Hogarth. “We live in an area where frost messes up our roads and we have to maintain it. I think it’s fine.”
Hogarth said the amount of staff the town has now compared to when he moved to town around 1970 has ballooned.
“Then, there were 10,000 people. Now, there’s 24,000. People want services and if you want services, you have to pay for it,” he said.
Murray Knowles, who serves on the town’s trails and active transportation committee, said he had no complaints about the overall budget so far.
“I’m just concerned about the active transportation component of it, obviously,” he said, noting he’d like to see more focus on proper signage and better line painting.
George Christie said he had difficulty hearing any of the presentation, but mentioned he’d love to have a town department exclusively devoted to trails.
“It seems well laid out,” said Rosalyn Morrison. “I’m pretty impressed with the amount of community engagement around the budget. It’s proposing some increases that will improve the quality of life in Collingwood.”
When asked how she feels about the 8.94 per cent proposed tax increase, Morrison said it’s important to look at the bigger picture beyond just this one year.
“When we think about taxation, we need to think about what kind of town we’re building. I think people have to understand that for probably five decades we’ve been saying we don’t want to pay taxes. It’s finally catching up with us,” she said. “Some of the challenges we’re facing in the 21st century are greater than challenges we’ve faced before.”
Examples of challenges the town is dealing with in putting the budget together this year include a hike in Ontario Provincial Police costs (37 per cent or $1.9 million more than in 2024) and a $985,000 revenue reduction from reserves. There is also a $5.6-million funding gap for the renewal of existing town assets.
On Wednesday, Bruce Clark said he also appreciated the town’s presentation.
“The budget is really out of whack because of the OPP portion. It’s frustrating when the town is given a 37 per cent budget increase with no explanation or negotiation,” said Clark. “It’s frustrating... to have that dumped on us and there’s not much we can do about it.”
Council was presented with the first draft of the 2025 budget at a special meeting on Nov. 13. As part of that meeting, all councillors had paper copies of the full budget they referred to throughout the meeting, however the full document wasn’t available publicly.
Instead, town staff prepared appendices that presented different aspects of the draft, which were attached to the agenda for that meeting.
Many of those appendices were on display as part of the Coffee with Council meeting. When asked why the town didn’t make the full document available prior to the Coffee with Council meeting, Graham apologized.
“My sincere apologies for not having the budget book posted before yesterday’s meeting,” she wrote in an email.
Graham explained that the appendices from the first draft are available on the town’s Engage page here as of Thursday.
“We are working on getting the full glossy budget book prepped for draft two that is fully accessible and user-friendly,” she said.
Draft two of the budget is expected to be presented to councillors at their meeting on Dec. 2.
