Why your road may not get paved

Richard Mahoney—My View
Why your road may not get paved

These are indeed taxing times at township halls as municipal officials finalize budgets that will determine property taxes, water and sewage fees (where applicable), and whether your road will finally get real pavement this year.

In a perfect world, all taxpayers would be engaged in these important deliberations.

But few people have ever attended a municipal council meeting, let alone actively participated in a municipal budget discussion.

Many ratepayers will never see the inside of a council chamber. In this wired world, if they are so inclined, interested taxpayers, in many municipalities, can tune into meetings that are streamed online and watch, from the comfort of their couch, how their dollars are being spent. Feedback is simple these days. Don’t agree with a decision taken by your representatives? Fire off an e-mail to a council member or staff member, or use one of those municipal web site thingees where the masses can provide input to the powers that be.

Or, go on “social” media and whinge about your issue, because everyone knows that ranting solves all problems and the ensuing “debates” are so constructive.

Some of these posts can be entertaining because “social” media really does have it all.

Usually the “dialogue” diverts far from the topic that prompted the original comment.  For example, a gripe about garbage collection or a slippery road can quickly spark complaints about recycling, schools and speeders. And eventually, during the back and forth, the sermons and chastisements, two long-lost friends will discover each other and agree to get together sometime for lunch, where they will ignore each other because they will be glued to their phones, eagerly awaiting blowback from their last “social” media posts.

Anyway, if you want to understand your tax bill, begin with the basic premise that municipal politicians have adopted as their go-to mantra: The federal government has all the funding, the province has all the power, and municipalities have all the problems.

While they are often described as being “creatures of the province,” local governments, which rely heavily on federal and provincial subsidies, are not totally powerless. Municipalities and united counties can set their own tax rates. But school boards have had their autonomy eroded over the years. Since 1997, the Ontario government has determined the education levy, which combines with the municipal and county portions to arrive at your final property tax bill.

It may be hard to believe, but most taxpayers are getting a break, thanks to the Ontario government’s inertia. Municipalities are continuing to calculate taxes using 2016 property values because the province has delayed having the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation update assessments. Has the value of your property increased since 2016? Probably. So your property tax bill would be much higher if the real current value of your home was used to calculate your bill.

Inevitably, the assessment freeze will cost us. Outdated assessments mean municipalities have outdated, and smaller, tax bases to work with. Tax bills will soar when the new, higher assessments go into effect.

Meanwhile, as the Association of Municipalities of Ontario stresses, property owners in this province already are saddled with onerous financial burdens. As of 2022, Ontario’s property taxes per person were the second highest in Canada at $2,200. Almost a third of yearly municipal spending in Ontario covers services that are provincial responsibilities in other parts of Canada. While the Ontario government partially offsets this gap, as of 2022 municipal expenditures in these areas outpaced provincial grants by nearly $4 billion, says the AMO.

Bleating pays off, sometimes. For instance, the Ontario government is providing over $77 million to municipalities to help cushion the blow of a huge increase in the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) invoice. The “investment will help these predominantly small and rural communities address the budget impacts resulting from the collective bargaining agreement that was reached between the province and the Ontario Provincial Police Association (OPPA) in July 2024,” says the province.

Local politicians are kept in the dark when it comes to the OPP budget. North Glengarry Mayor and former SDG Warden Jamie MacDonald observed recently that the SDG Police Services Board have “zero say” in the police service’s bill.

That is why representatives were upset to be told that policing services in Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry will cost 21.5 per cent more in 2025 than they did last year, for a total of about $12 million. This works out to $354.30 per household, which is still lower than the provincial average of $399 per household.  For context consider that Cornwall’s police department budget will total $24 million this year.

Any help from Queen’s Park is appreciated, but the approval of relief money is merely moving funds from one public purse to another. The government is using our money to reduce the amount we have to pay for a police bill that has shot up because the government used our money to give police officers a raise.

And all of this somehow makes sense.

New challenges for municipalities include the More Homes Built Faster Act, designed to fast-track the construction of new affordable residences. To encourage more construction, municipalities are asked to waive or discount fees, thereby depriving them of traditional sources of revenues and forcing municipalities to find alternate ways of funding services for growing communities. The end goal – more homes – is laudable but the process kicks the hell out of the quaint concept that “growth should pay for growth.”

So the bottom line is, as usual, there is never enough money to go around.

Does this help you understand why your road may not be paved this year?

Let us know what you think at rmahoney@seawaynews.media

Share this article