5.2% tax increase proposed for Windsorites: What you need to know about the 2023 budget
Here’s what you need to know about how city hall wants to spend your money and new revenue they want to collect.
The documents for the city’s 2023 budget are now available online, well in advance of deliberations currently slated for April.
“The budget is certainly complex, it’s very intricate,” says Joe Mancina chief financial officer for the City of Windsor.
Mancina says the 2023 budget debate is different from previous years in that administration has now created an Operating Budget Review Committee (OBRC).
The committee members will pour over the budget documents the week of Jan. 23.
“It does give them an opportunity to delve in a little bit further, in more detail,” said Mancina.
The 65-page Executive Summary calls for a 5.2 per cent tax increase for ratepayers.
“It would be approximately about $160 (more) on an average residential home in the City of Windsor,” noted Mancina.
Mancina adds the 5.2 per cent increase is just a starting point and expects council will work at whittling the number down between now and final budget approvals in April.
Administration has broken the budget into six groups identified by letters.
City of Windsor budget categories
According to the budget documents, the city needs to collect more than $460 million through property taxes to fund operating needs, requested increases from agencies, boards and committees and previously approved costs.
What Windsor has to pay for:
- $5 million for asset management plan (money set aside every year to make sure there’s money to maintain buildings and infrastructure)
- $1.3 million for battery plant land acquisition
- Employee costs including wage adjustments, negotiated pension and benefit increases, CPP, employer health tax, employment insurance
- Contractual increases for waste and recycling collection, winter road maintenance, parking enforcement, Huron Lodge caretaking, corporate software maintenance, external audit fees, 311 call centre software
- Contractual obligation to Humane Society for animal control
- New Hires: 1 new full-time employee in human resources, 5 housing first workers, 2 homelessness street outreach workers
- Provincially mandated protection for Fire and Rescue
- Increase in insurance premiums
- Transit Windsor enhancements
- $125,000 for Rapid Housing Initiative
- The above lists are all identified in the budget documents with an “A.”
Mancina says they are items which council has “little or no discretion” to change.
They account for the largest influence on the budget at more than $14 million in expenses.
Where Windsor can get more money:
Highlighted with a “D” in the Executive Summary, administration has a wide range of ideas for bringing in more money.
Administration is recommending:
- Legal Services user fees going up 7.8 per cent
- Parks department user fees going up for facilities
- Public Works eliminating one parking enforcement officer and change the schedule for the remaining eight employees so there’s no service disruption
- Charge $20 for rodent control program
- Mancina says administration poured over countless line items for how to save money.
- Those they do not feel are necessary or would be harmful to the city’s strategic priorities or goals were not recommended for consideration.
- They are however included in the Executive Summary - as items “F” - so council knows what was considered.
Highest Priority Issues:
These items are identified with a “B” in the executive summary.
Many of them deal with new employee positions including another 911 operator and 311 call takers. Jobs are also requested for payroll, data analysis, Human Resources, facility supervisors and design standards.
Administration is also recommending the City Hall security job be extended.
This grouping also includes requests to boost trail maintenance, financial analyst support and flood mitigation in parks.
Many departments are also seeking an increase in funds because of inflationary pressures.
Things administration is NOT recommending:
- Reduce Transit service by 29,000 hours ($2.8 million in savings)
- Eliminate student labour in parks and public works ($1.7+ million in savings)
- Reduce residential snow removal from four inches to six inches ($1.1 million in savings)
- Reduce forestry contract budget ($387,000+ in savings)
- Eliminate facility preventative maintenance budget ($323,000+ in savings)
- Reduce corporate training and succession planning budgets ($222,000+ in savings)
- Reduce Legal Claims budget ($200,000 in savings)
- Eliminate Employee Family Assistance program ($165,000+ in savings)
- Reducing Economic Development budget by $105,000
- Eliminate pest control budget at city facilities ($40,000 in savings)
- Eliminate BIA maintenance ($32,000+ in savings)
- Eliminate Snow Angels program ($25,000+ in savings)
- Eliminate IT support fee in Public Works ($22,000+ in savings)
- Eliminate benchmarking initiative which compares Windsor to other similar municipalities ($18,000+ in savings)
- Eliminate closed-captioning of council meetings on YourTV ($17,000+ in savings)
- Eliminate washing of city vehicles ($16,000+ in savings)
- Reducing Environmental Master Plan by 23% [document notes accepting this would put the cities involvement in environmental programs and initiatives “at risk”] ($14,000+ in savings)
Other worthwhile enhancements (G):
There are just four line items under this category, most dealing with hiring new staff.
A $544,000 request is for a data and insights division within the Information and Technology Division.
Windsor Fire and Rescue is also asking for new deputy fire chiefs. And Public Works wants one-time funding of more than $264,000 to enhance street sweeping.
Mancina says these are items brought forward that are worth consideration, that administration looked into, but at this time they are not recommending city council move forward with.
What’s next?
The week of Jan. 23 the OBRC will go over the budget documents line by line and consider all categories. They will be able to ask questions of department heads for clarity.
That committee will then make recommendations to administration “that will then form the basis of what we work with and then come back to the full city council for budget deliberations in early April,” says Mancina.
Although the city did offer public consultation on the budget last fall, Mancina says residents can continue to be a part of the process by sending an email to clerks@citywindsor.ca for consideration by the OBRC.
The deadline for those emails is Monday, Jan. 16. The public can also be a part of the full budget debate in April when council will accept delegations before finalizing the budget for 2023.
New Operating Budget Review Committee to Review 2023 Municipal Budget Estimates
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