Article content
Financial pressures Windsor officials have suggested could translate into a possible 12.9-per-cent property tax increase in 2025 are based only on very broad estimates, say senior city hall administrators.
During Windsor’s first budget review committee meeting on Tuesday, councillors learned that an in-depth staff review of revenue, proposed service enhancements, and provisions for agencies, boards, and committees, among other things, was still two weeks away.
Advertisement 2
Article content
Those items total more than $20 million in 2025 spending pressures, representing almost a third of the projected increase.
What it means, however, is that council’s three new budget committees are exploring potential cost-saving service cuts without a full picture of dollar demands.
“As we always do every year, administration goes through on a line-by-line basis and we look at the issues in detail,” city treasurer Janice Guthrie told reporters on Tuesday. “We refine those estimates, and we ultimately put forward a recommendation — that process hasn’t happened yet.
“That process will take place over the next couple of weeks,” she said, after which the city should have a better understanding of actual budget pressures.
“The work of the committee that you saw here today is really to look at service delivery,” Guthrie said.
Earlier this month, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens used strong mayor powers to create three budget review committees, each composed of three or four councillors. The committees are tasked with scouring the operating budgets of different city departments for potential efficiencies.
Advertisement 3
Article content
The exercise aims to slash what the mayor described as 2025 budget pressures equating to a 12.9-per-cent tax hike. If no savings are identified, it would be the city’s highest levy increase in decades.
Dilkens revealed that figure on Sept. 17 but declared the city would find cuts. One week earlier, he refused to give reporters a preliminary number for the 2025 tax increase and said it would be a “challenging year,” financially.
Although the projected levy impact will likely drop, Guthrie on Tuesday said it was fair for the city to share the “high-level projection” of budget pressures, which include inflation and contractual pay raises, with residents.
“I think it’s good business practice to highlight what those pressures are,” she said. “Being a municipality, we have to be transparent.
“We’re not trying to cover that up. We always start with a high number. This year, it just happened to be higher, which puts a premium on looking at efficiencies.”
Proposed service enhancements put forward by city departments represent 1.68 per cent of the levy impact (more than $8.1 million). Those have not been vetted by the city’s most senior administrators on the corporate leadership team and may include funding requests that will be denied.
Advertisement 4
Article content
Provisions for agencies, boards, and committees — including the Windsor Public Library, the Windsor Police Services Board, the Windsor Essex Community Housing Corporation, and more — represent 2.09 per cent of the levy impact (more than $10.1 million).
That figure is based on administration’s “high-level projections,” and budgets are still subject to approval by each respective board. Some agencies, boards, and committees have not yet submitted budget requests, the council committee heard.
Revenue reductions — a 0.76 per cent impact, or roughly $3.7 million — are also high-level estimates and will be offset at least in part by more revenue from increases to user fees coming down the pipe.
The first budget review committee meeting on Tuesday saw Ward 1 Coun. Fred Francis, Ward 8 Coun. Gary Kaschak, and Ward 10 Coun. Jim Morrison delve into the city’s engineering and economic development departments. That committee recommended that staff reintroduce sidewalk café fees, review reserve accounts, and review user fees and revenue sources in the planning department.
Advertisement 5
Article content
Morrison, the committee’s chair, told reporters the committee doesn’t intend to cut economic development or engineering staff.
“We really don’t want to slow down the process of building and planning. The city’s growing, so those areas are certainly being run very well.”
The committee also requested more information about transit spending, but the details of those requests were discussed in-camera.
“We need to recover our costs in transit a little better,” Morrison said. “We’re just asking for information to come back to see what does (action) make sense and what doesn’t make sense.”
For the second budget review committee meeting, which began later Tuesday, Ward 2 Coun. Fabio Costante, Ward 7 Coun. Angelo Marignani, and Ward 9 Coun. Kieran McKenzie analyzed the city’s finance and social services departments.
Most of the city’s spending on social services — 89 per cent — is funded by the provincial and federal governments, the committee heard. Much of the remaining 11 per cent, which is municipally funded, is tied to funding from upper levels of government, and very little of it is optional.
Advertisement 6
Article content
When it comes to spending on housing and social services, the committee asked administration for help understanding the return on investment, committee chair Costante told the Star. Staff will report back on how such spending results in lower costs to the health care and criminal justice systems, among other things.
To better understand spending in the city’s finance department, the second committee asked for a report on the degree of risk associated with each employee.
Recommended from Editorial
“A lot of this work is checks and balances, and people overseeing other peoples’ work, and protocols and controls in place to make sure we don’t run into any fraud or scandal,” Costante said. “The question is, how much risk do we want to take on?
“In a perfect world, you have no one overseeing the work, and there’s nothing untoward happening. So, you can save X amount on personnel — that’s really where the savings are.”
The third budget review committee meets at city hall at 9 a.m. on Thursday to discuss the corporate and community services departments. That committee is composed of Ward 6 Coun. Jo-Anne Gignac, Ward 3 Coun. Renaldo Agostino, Ward 4 Coun. Mark McKenzie, and Ward 5 Coun. Ed Sleiman.
Article content
