City Council Preview - What's on the Agenda for the December 5 Meeting?

Decisions will be made! It's been a fairly smooth budget process so far, but now council must decide the big piece of the budget, which is the Tax-Supported Operating Budget. What will the final numbers be? What will the rate increase for next year be? Stay tuned...

CON-2017.50 2018 Tax Supported Operating Budget - To recap, the recommendations for the 2018 Tax-Supported Operating Budget are:

1. That the Executive Team recommended Tax Supported Operating Budget with a net levy requirement of $232,907,226 or 2.19 per cent above the 2017 net tax levy operating budget be approved, including: A base operating budget, including reserve and reserve transfers, user fee increases and assessment growth, totaling a net levy requirement of $232,063,026 or 1.82 per cent above last year; plus impacts from other levels of government totaling a net levy requirement of $844,200 or 0.37 per cent above last year;

City department budget expansions totaling a net levy requirement of $3,194,028 or 1.4 per cent;

3. An additional contribution towards the City’s long-term goal of sustainable capital funding in the form of the Dedicated Infrastructure Levy of 1.0 per cent of the overall 2018 net levy;

4. Local Board expansions totaling a net levy requirement of $567,409 or 0.25 per cent.

To review the details of the tax-supported budget, you can click here, and here.

C-CON-2017.19 2018 Non-Union Compensation Increase - There will be some news about this behind the scenes at the next meeting of council on Monday November 27 in a closed session. In the meantime, there will be an adjustment by a mysterious six-figure amount for non-union compensation announced at the meeting. (Perhaps it could be related to the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health budget, which had no hard numbers in it because they were in the middle of labour negotiations themselves, but that's just idle speculation.)

CON-2017.52 Budget Impacts per Ontario Regulations 284/09 and Budget Public Sector Accounting Standards Reconciliation - There are three items not included with the budget, but are taken into account (pun intended) when the annual audited statements are delivered: Amortization expense on tangible capital assets; Post-employment benefit costs; and Landfill post-closure costs. The amortization expense, which is the cost of capital assets measured over their useful lives, is over $44.4 million for 2018, while the increased impact of liability of medical and dental benefits to eligible retirees is nearly $1.3 million. Meanwhile, the City's liability in post-closure costs for the landfill is down next year by $140,000.

CON-2017.51 2018 Local Boards and Shared Services Budgets - As discussed at the November 15 budget meeting, which you can review here.