Neither forward nor back

Treading water is expensive

Status quo: the existing condition or state of affairs

The status quo has an inoffensive, almost benign sound to it, neither challenging nor provocative. Nor is it ambitious. Whether it is the size of council or deliberating a budget, this term of County council has shown a distinct preference for the status quo. No sudden movements. No big plans. No surprises.

But status quo doesn’t mean your tax bill will go unchanged. In terms of the County budget, status quo means doing what the municipality did last year, at roughly the same level of service. So while County council is aiming to do nothing particularly different in 2016— doing this will cost $2 million more than it did in 2014, the last full year with actual data.

That’s a seven per cent increase in two years. Canada’s inflation rate has tracked at one per cent for the past two years.

Doing the same, at Shire Hall, will cost you more.

When council sat down last week to begin slogging through municipal budgets and capital works plans, it was looking at a taxpayer levy of $31.8 million in 2016. Only a decade ago the tax levy crested $20 million.

The tax levy proposed for 2016 is more than three times the levy of 1998—the year the County was amalgamated.

That might be easier to absorb if the number of taxpayers in the County had risen accordingly. But it hasn’t. According to the last census, the County’s population declined between 2006 and 2011. For more than two decades, the number of folks living in the County has clung stubbornly to about 25,000 people.

Averaged out over the entire population, every child, woman and man paid $420 in property taxes in 1998. Next year, their share of the property bill will be $1,270 each. It has been a costly 17 years.

WHAT’S GOING UP
The headline items pushing the County’s operating budget higher next year include $214,000 more for road maintenance and winter control items including ploughing, sand and salt. Road engineering costs are also rising in 2016 as the County ramps up its capacity in advance of major reconstruction work on Picton’s Main Street and Rednersville Road. A new government in Ottawa is also prompting Shire Hall officials to get busy preparing a list of shovel-ready projects in anticipation of more infrastructure money flowing its way.

Garbage costs are also going up. The County’s share of the cost of Quinte Recycling will jump by $130,000 next year—a 28 per cent increase. But even though more folks are recycling and diverting more away from the landfill, that won’t prevent an jump of $62,000 to the cost of collecting and disposing of garbage.

Policing costs are expected to increase by $54,000 to $3.6 million—but still lower than the actual amount paid in 2014 under a previous funding formula. County fire services, however, are expected to jump $117,000 next year to $2.7 million—eight per cent more than 2014.

While the County expects to generate more revenue from fines and tickets it receives from provincial offence infractions in 2016, it will net $44,000 less than the amount it earned last year.

And the County’s planning department will see a spike in operating costs in 2016 as it fills positions that have been vacant for the past couple of years.

In its deliberations last week, several budget items were pared back, while proposals for specific increases were floated. We will take a closer look at some of these items later in this issue.

When council broke up on Friday—finished with operations budget and ready to examine capital works spending this week—it was looking at a 3.35 per cent increase in 2016 over this year.