Warden’s statement on county budget
Committee of the Whole met Nov. 14 to make our recommendation on our 2024 budget.
County council had a very positive discussion at Committee of the Whole as councillors all worked to protect the interest of and impact to our residents. Similar to all organizations and individual residents of Simcoe County, the county is impacted by inflation, rising costs of construction, CPI, supplies, insurance and other commodities. Because we knew the pressures families were facing during lockdowns and throughout COVID, the county had previously held a modest tax increase over that time to ensure that we were helping our residents as much as we were able to during the height of the pandemic, even holding at zero per cent in 2021, which has reduced some of our financial flexibility today.
What stood out to me through our discussions, are the wide reaching benefits of our regional system and the critical services provided by the County of Simcoe to our residents, particularly as we continue to recover. When there are more people contributing to these services and projects, the impact is less on each of us.
It’s this size and scope of the county operations that enables us to continue building up communities and delivering large road projects such as our $180 million
(total) investment in County Road 4 enhancements, affordable housing builds such as our $217 million (total) investment in a new build in the City of Barrie, along with housing builds that will open up next year in both Bradford and in Orillia, new paramedic stations in Bradford and Springwater so we can get to residents quicker, adding more long-term care beds, and the purchase of new buses so we can expand our regional LINX transit system, among so many other services and projects.
Committee of the Whole recommended an investment in our residents and programs with a proposed 3.7 per cent tax levy for 2024 (2 per cent towards capital improvements and 1.7 per cent towards operational enhancements). For households, this results in a $10.69 annual impact per $100,000 of home assessment ($42.76 impact annually per average home in Simcoe County). The county’s total budget for 2024 is proposed to be $622 million, with $212 million (34 per cent) coming from Simcoe County residential property taxes and the remaining amount from other funding streams.
Councillors will consider, and potentially ratify, the 2024 budget recommendation at our next meeting on Nov. 28.
~ Warden Basil Clarke
