The Town of The Blue Mountains is facing one of the toughest budget challenges in recent years in 2025.
At a special council meeting on Nov. 25, council received its first glimpse of how the draft 2025 budget is shaping up. Monica Quinlan, the town’s director of corporate and financial services, brought a report to the meeting about 2025 budget timelines that included the first run-through of some tough budget figures.
The report noted that initially, without any changes, the town is facing a local property tax increase of 18.9 per cent or close to $4.3 million in real dollars.
Quinlan cautioned council that those figures were very preliminary and would be adjusted as senior staff continue to develop the draft budget, which council will discuss in early January at committee of the whole budget meetings.
Quinlan said staff know that an increase of more than 18 per cent is “not palatable” and said more work would be happening in the coming weeks. She also said it is a common theme across Ontario for municipalities to be facing tough budgets in 2025.
“We’re not alone. Most municipalities, most notably in this area, are seeing these types of increases,” she said.
Multiple members of council expressed concerns about the initial figures, but also noted that many of the increases in the chart presented by Quinlan were for services that could not be cut or reduced.
Notable increases in the chart included:
- 3.3 per cent for the salary market review
- 2.9 per cent for the contract for OPP policing
- 2.4 per cent for staff cost of living and union agreement increases
- 2.3 per cent for the fire department
- 2.2 per cent for garbage collection.
The full list can be found in the report here.
In her report, Quinlan asked council to set a guideline/target for staff to achieve with the first draft of the budget. This request caused consternation around the table, as members of council were reluctant to set a formal target for the tax increase without having an idea of how that would be achieved.
Deputy Mayor Peter Bordignon said, by his calculations, 13.3 per cent of the 18.9 per increase is for services that can’t be cut or reduced. He said in “good conscience” he couldn’t pick a random number for an increase without having a better idea of how the rest of the budget would be impacted.
Coun. Paula Hope agreed and said she was reluctant about “pulling a number out of the sky.”
“There has to be some logic to it,” she said
A motion from Coun. June Porter asked staff to come back with a draft budget with an eight per cent local tax increase. However, this motion was defeated in a 4-3 vote with Porter and Councillors Shawn McKinlay and Alex Maxwell in favour.
A second motion subsequently passed asking staff to bring back a draft budget that included all uncontrollable, mandatory and committed projects.
