This is the time of year when our elected municipal councils show us that we chose well when we cast our ballots in the previous election. They are up to their ears in budget deliberations.
At one time, doing the municipal budget was a matter of figuring out how much money each of a handful of landowners had to pitch in to build a road.
Things have become more complicated – even the smallest municipality has many roads these days, not to mention bridges, culverts and an arena or two… and there are a lot of landowners.
Municipal ratepayers (us), the modern incarnation of those medieval landowners, choose a handful of people to make good decisions about the infrastructure and services we pay for and use. There are other levels of government with their own responsibilities, and various ways to raise money to pay for them, mostly income tax, but there are also sales and other taxes, and a variety of fees. Municipal responsibilities are still funded primarily through taxes on property.
However, it costs a lot more to run a municipality than it used to. We now have a huge, and largely urban, population that has certain expectations when it comes to services, infrastructure and recreational amenities.
It has been decades since our federal government went on a spending spree, and the roads and arenas built during the boom years that followed the Second World War are in need of updating, repair or replacement. Forget demolition without replacement – people hate losing services and facilities.
Even at the best of economic times – which 2024 is not, due to a housing crisis, an even worse health-care situation, rising interest rates, and a labour shortage – municipal governments skate on a slippery slope of maintaining the infrastructure we have, building to service future growth, and keeping municipal taxes low. Add the fact municipalities are increasingly being called on to spend funds on matters that are supposed to be the responsibility of senior levels of government – health care, for example – and that slope is getting steeper and more slippery by the day.
This usually translates into fixing (or demolishing) anything that is about to fall down, postponing work on anything that is not, begging the provincial and federal governments for more money, and trying to explain to ratepayers why their property taxes are going up again. There is only so much that can be blamed on inflation.
The real picture is a lot more complicated. Keeping property taxes unrealistically low may work for the short term, but will eventually backfire. Not filling a small pothole to save money is false economy; it just means spending a lot more money a year from now to rebuild a chunk of road. Municipalities that focus solely on low taxes eventually end up watching development (and the accompanying property taxes) going to areas willing to spend tax dollars carefully and thoughtfully, investing in services and infrastructure people want.
Reality check – our taxes are not going to go down; they are going up. Everything from utilities to labour costs more, whether we are paying for it as individuals or collectively, as a municipality.
Infrastructure does not last forever. We could probably build bridges and roads that would last as long as Roman structures, some of which are still in use after a couple of millennia, but the cost would be astronomical. We do not take decades to build solid stone roads; we use asphalt and steel to build quickly in a constantly changing environment. If we want our structures to last or even exceed their expected lifespan, we need to invest in maintenance.
Another reality is people expect their municipality to provide certain amenities, recreation being one of them. Spending on “soft services” is an investment, not a needless expense. The idea is to choose wisely about where, how and how much we invest.
Bravo to our elected municipal council members who are doing their best to invest wisely. The decisions they make on the current budget will dictate whether this area is one people want to live, work and invest in, for decades to come.
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Pauline Kerr is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter currently working for Midwestern Newspapers. She can be reached at pkerr@midwesternnewspapers.com.
