While Collingwood town council sat down together on Wednesday to go over the first draft of the 2025 budget with a red pen, crossing out items turned out to be a difficult task for the group.
On Nov. 13, the town held a special budget meeting for staff to officially present the budget to councillors, going over new budget requests line-by-line.
After six hours, council wasn’t able to make it through the entire list of requests, and had little luck finding items to remove. As of their meeting, the draft budget is sitting at an 8.94-per-cent tax increase for 2025.
“These are all important things. I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Mayor Yvonne Hamlin during discussion.
“This is going to be a grim budget for many of our citizens,” said Coun. Christopher Baines.
Operating budget resource requests for 2025 total $2,681,766.
Council did cut $55,000 proposed for a town council governance and structure review and $13,000 for a seasonal communications student.
When discussing a $375,000 request for both the multi-use recreation facility and arts centre projects to be split and moved into a reserve for the future of the projects, Hamlin asked what is currently in the town’s reserves earmarked for that purpose already.
Treasurer Jennifer Graham noted there is currently $3.14 million in the multi-use recreation facility reserve, and $1.4 million in the arts and culture legacy reserve. Most of the funds in these reserves came from the sale of some town assets in 2021, with little further investment made since.
“I guess the point of this is to build up the reserves for these two major capital projects. In a perfect world we’d be sending $5 million to each, but not this year,” said Hamlin.
Doherty asked if the amount of funding for the projects could be lowered this year, however council voted 7-1 to remove it altogether for the second draft. Coun. Brandon Houston was absent from the meeting.
There were five new staff positions requested in the budget, and requests for two positions to move from part to full-time.
“I’m really opposed to adding any new jobs this year. I think it’s a difficult position for us to try to get this down to a reasonable amount,” said Coun. Kathy Jeffery. “It’s not because I don’t want to, but I think with this proposed increase we’re not in a position to be adding new jobs.”
For new staff hire requests, council had a detailed discussion on a new pool operator position at a cost of $84,348. Director of parks, recreation and culture Karen Cubitt explained that while the town did once employ a pool operator, in 2021 that role was shifted to assist at both the Centennial Aquatic Centre and the town’s two arenas. With ice time and pool time at a premium these days with all the facilities now operating at full capacity, town staff felt it was time to bring back the position to have one staff member focusing specifically on the pool.
Currently, recreation staff split time between the three facilities, and the town contracts a cleaning company for daily cleaning of the pool, at a cost of $30,000 per year. The contract cleaning cost would be rolled into the $84,348 for the new staff hire, if approved.
Coun. Deb Doherty raised concern that there had been many unscheduled closings of the pool, and asked if the new hire would help solve that problem.
Cubitt said that many of the closures were due to a shortage of lifeguards and aquatics staff, so the new hire would not make an impact on that issue. The operator would be responsible for pool cleaning and regular maintenance.
“Having this person would address the time it takes for us to address issues at the pool and prevent short staffing at the arenas,” said Cubitt.
Doherty also asked about the town’s user fees for the pool being very low. Hamlin noted that perhaps the town should be charging a higher rate for non-residents to use the pool to help recoup costs.
“There is opportunity for us to increase them modestly,” said Doherty. Graham noted that the town’s fees and charges for 2025 would be coming to council for approval in December.
At the end of discussion, councillors voted 4-3 in favour of moving the pool operator position to the next round of budget discussions, with Jeffery, Coun. Chris Potts and Coun. Rob Ring opposed. Deputy Mayor Tim Fryer declared a conflict and did not vote on the item.
During discussion on hiring a new truck driver labourer for $49,105, Daniel Cole, manager of public works told councillors that the town currently contracts out snow plowing in the town’s east end at a cost of $93,000 per season, and adding the position starting in the 2025/26 winter would bring the job in-house. The $49,105 is anticipated to be half the yearly wage for the position, as it won’t start until the end of 2025.
“Any time we have an opportunity to bring contracted work back in-house, it boosts morale for the staff,” said Cole.
Council voted unanimously in favour of keeping the truck driver position in the next budget draft.
For a $100,000 expenditure to transfer to a land acquisition reserve fund, council voted 5-3 in favour of moving it to the next budget draft with Doherty, Potts and Fryer opposed.
“We need land for a lot of different purposes,” said Hamlin.
During a conversation on a requested $275,000 for a pay policy review, the town’s executive director of customer and corporate services Amanda Pegg explained that pay rates for town staff currently sit at a P50 pay scale, which is lower than some surrounding municipalities and has led to the town having difficulty attracting and retaining staff.
The $275,000 request would translate to pay increases for all staff, bringing them up to a P55 level to make the town’s wages more competitive. Jeffery shared concern that municipalities are forced into competition with each other.
“What I find is...we’re in a losing game with this in terms of affordability for our municipalities and at some point... all of us can’t afford to continue on that trend,” she said. “I would hope that communities close to us would be thinking along the same lines.”
“It’s lose-lose going forward,” said Jeffery.
She also shared concern about $390,000 going into Terminals Point plans.
“I was surprised to see that line item,” said Jeffery.
Both the staff pay raises and Terminals Point line items stayed in the draft budget.
Coun. Christopher Baines raised concern about a one-time $80,000 request to pay for a geotechnical investigation of inactive landfills, which is a legislative requirement.
Collingwood is home to five inactive landfills. There is one at Terminals Point, however the developer overseeing the Terminals revitalization is undertaking the cost of that work for their site. There are four remaining landfills – some on municipally-owned lands and some on private lands – that would be part of the investigation.
The town’s director of planning Summer Valentine said it was important the work on both the private and public lands be undertaken by the town as the impacts of unaddressed issues on these sites could leech out into neighbouring properties. The town’s CAO Sonya Skinner noted that if the town didn’t take on the cost, builders on those lands would have to and would likely then pass on that cost to future home owners, driving up the cost of housing.
Councillors voted unanimously in favour of moving the $80,000 request to the next budget draft.
Council also considered a $306,015 request to extend hours for all Collingwood Transit. During staff remarks, Graham noted the number was a miscalculation, and would be the cost to extend transit hours by four hours, although council had requested a three-hour extension. She said the number will be recalculated for three hours in the next budget draft, and would be about $231,000 instead.
The town’s director of public works, transportation and environment Peggy Slama said the town is giving notice to Ace Transportation Group to get out of their contract for accessible taxi as of Jan. 1, 2025, so the town could recoup some funds through that process to apply to the town transit hour increase.
“This is a big change,” said Deputy Mayor Tim Fryer.
Councillors voted unanimously in favour of moving the item to the next budget draft.
The town’s overall funding is made up of multiple income sources including the tax levy, payments in lieu of taxes, grants or government transfers, user rates, user fees, fines, investment income and development charges.
The tax levy alone, if approved, would make up $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.
Capital spending this year is expected to the tune of $130.9 million, however only $2.4 million would coming from the municipal tax levy with the rest expected from government grants, reserves and non-tax revenue.
Items supported on this list through the tax levy include:
- $130,000 for a parks, recreation and culture master plan refresh,
- $100,000 for seasonal washrooms at the Collingwood Amphitheatre,
- $150,000 for town hall refurbishment,
- $800,000 for strategic land acquisition,
- $50,000 for trail development, and
- $1 million for the Collingwood Terminals.
Council did not get to the capital list during their Nov. 13 discussions.
Significant 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.
Hamlin noted that the 37 per cent increase to OPP costs is creating the biggest challenge of the 2025 budget.
“This is really hamstringing us with what we want to do for our community this year,” she said. “I hope we can solve things with the province on that front before we have to approve this budget.”
Any decisions made during the meeting are not final decisions, but will inform the second draft of the budget, which is expected to be presented to council again at their regular meeting on Dec. 2 with an updated tax increase number. Council could choose at that time to remove more, or add items back.
The next step in the budget process is a Coffee with Council event on Nov. 20 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Collingwood Public Library, where staff will present the first draft of the budget and council will attend to talk with residents before the Dec. 2 meeting.
