When it comes to what’s going into the town’s 2025 operating budget, Coun. Wendy Cheropita is focused on maintaining services and improving municipal infrastructure — saying that’s what many residents of Niagara-on-the-Lake want.
Nov. 20 marked the first of three meetings where finance staff presented a draft budget with a total operating levy of around $18.4 million, around $2.3 million more than 2024’s operating budget.
The operating budget summary included a potential impact of $204 annually for the average resident based on a home assessed at $544,000, making for a 14.4 per cent tax levy increase.
In an interview with The Lake Report, Cheropita confirmed that this increase is just a starting point and is by no means final.
“What I feel is that this is a year when I don’t want to have a tax increase if at all possible — this is not a great time for most families,” she said.
Rather than looking to enhance services, Cheropita said she hopes to maintain services.
During the presentation’s question period, she said the service she is most focused on with the 2025 budget is infrastructure.
“I always go back to the town mission and that’s all about providing dependable infrastructure,” Cheropita said.
Cheropita cited a resident survey regarding the town budget conducted in October and November.
“The only areas where (residents) were looking for enhancement were roads and infrastructure, nothing else,” she said.
“For me, that said the number one priority here is infrastructure both in our mission and in the resident request.”
Cheropita also highlighted flooding stormwater management.
“We’ve identified issues relevant to climate and also development,” she said.
Kyle Freeborn, the town’s director of corporate services, said that 98 per cent of the total levy increase is due to an increase in salaries and volunteer firefighter compensation along with insurance increases, a capital transfer increase, parking funding for transit subsidy, one-time reserve transfers, revenue reductions, vehicle maintenance and road maintenance.
Salary increases and firefighter compensation see the highest increase, rising by $1.9 million.
The town has also yet to calculate its legal expenses for 2024, but it has “proven difficult to accurately budget,” Freeborn said.
The legal budget currently stands at $650,000 for corporate needs, he said.
Freeborn walked councillors through areas in spending that could be cut to save cash.
Cuts to the dock area reserve, eliminating the parking transfer to transit reduction, eliminating or reducing the use of discretionary grants and a blanket reduction on all contracted services were all options Freeborn posed.
The next two meetings of the budget committee meeting prior to the budget’s finalization will be Nov. 28 and Dec. 5.
For more information about upcoming budget committee meetings, and to watch past meetings, review the meeting calendar on notl.com/council-government/meetings-agendas-minutes.
