Budget time. This is when the people we elected to municipal council in the fall prove we made the right choice – or not.
While staff members do the hard slogging of making sure the numbers are correct, the math adds up and no detail is overlooked, it is council that determines what happens with those numbers. Will they set the stage for future prosperity, or discourage growth?
It is a delicate balancing act. Residents have certain expectations that go well beyond roads without tire-eating potholes, water that is safe to drink, and tax bills that are reasonable. In this part of Ontario in the third decade of the new millennium, those expectations include everything from educational and employment opportunities to access to health care, good internet and regular garbage pickup. And pickleball courts.
Municipal council makes decisions that have an impact on what kind of police service the community receives, how attractive the downtown is to both businesses and customers, and whether there is housing available for the new staff needed by a local firm that wants to expand.
Gone are the days when a rural council discussed little more than what kind of gravel to put on the roads and how to avoid a tax increase. Today’s council members discuss things that would boggle the minds of their counterparts from not long ago.
The notion of not raising taxes is still a factor. There is a certain kind of taxpayer to whom it appeals – the kind who sees no connection between their tax bill and pothole-free roads. For the most part, taxpayers understand that good roads and all the rest of what they expect their municipality to provide, comes at a cost. There is also a cost for unrealistically low taxes – a collapsed bridge, closed road or a major sewer problem, for example.
There is one thing that has not changed over the years – municipal councillors in rural communities are not in it for the money. They receive pay that, if one considers the amount of time spent in reading over the mountain of material they receive for each council meeting, the number of emails and phone calls they make and receive on behalf of the municipality, and the actual time they spend at meetings and events, amounts to a modest honorarium for volunteer work.
Most serve on municipal council to give back to their communities. They have valuable skills and experience that will benefit the entire municipality, and the generosity of spirit to want to do so.
If your elected municipal representatives seem a bit frazzled this time of year, try attending a budget meeting. The experience will be enlightening on a number of levels – the services municipalities are mandated by federal and provincial governments to provide, the price tag for replacing one little culvert, and the fact that if councils decided to fix everything that needed fixing, replace everything that needed replacing, give financial support to every group that asked, and provide taxpayers with all the amenities they called for, the resulting tax increase would scare the living daylights out of everybody.
Municipal councillors are still dealing with the fallout from the COVID pandemic – funding from senior levels of government that is disappearing faster than the need for it, the rising inflation rate and the efforts of the Bank of Canada to rein it in, and ongoing chaos in health care, for starters.
Much of our infrastructure was built with federal and provincial dollars more than half a decade ago, and is nearing its “best-before” date. The grants that built it have largely disappeared – it will be up to municipalities to repair and rebuild.
The pressures are many, the needs are great, and municipal councils are focused on meeting the challenges.
The decisions they make in the next few weeks will determine whether this municipality is the kind of place where our children will find the same opportunities we did.
Bravo to them for meeting the challenges of municipal budget 2023 with such dedication and expertise.
