After years of lower taxes, it looks like residents of West Nipissing will have to open up their wallets a bit if the early budget meetings of 2020 are any indication.
“It’s early, but people will be paying more taxes unless council makes a strategic decision to alter their levels of service and strategic priorities, but council hasn’t had those kinds of discussions for this term,” Chief Administrative Officer Jay Barbeau said. “When you have a large organization such as a municipality or city, you offer many services with many different and varying expenditures for those services, you rely on various sources of funding and taxation is one of those sources.”
“As the public is no doubt aware, there are pressures on municipalities with respect to funding levels that provinces usually provide, as well as funding to our services partners such as social services, home for the aged, and health units,” he continued. “It’s very clear the present government is looking to find efficiencies and are looking all over so municipalities are feeling that. To be able to continue to provide these services, which are deemed critical by the residences, they will have to pay a little more on their taxes.”
A West Nipissing household paid, in 2019, an average of $2,163.86 in property taxes, which is the lowest among several comparable municipalities across the province. The closest example given was Elliot Lake at $2,513.56, while North Bay homeowners paid an average of $3,376.48.
“We already offer our services for a much lower level of taxes than other municipalities,” Barbeau said. “Last year we were recognized as the lowest taxed municipality in Canada, we are very efficient at what we do. When you look at a percentage increase, it isn’t a dollar value. Perhaps five per cent in North Bay would represent an eight per cent increase in West Nipissing.”
Although it is early in the process, Barbeau says there isn’t a concrete number on how much the levy will increase.
“It really depends on a final discussion with council,” he explained. “Presently we are still presenting to council the initial assumptions and scenarios which leads to the present, slightly under 12 per cent increase. Those increases have some options that council will have to look at to reduce it to an acceptable level and once that is completed, we will have a budget.”
When looking at the budget, and past numbers, Barbeau says it’s a good selling point on West Nipissing.
“It’s how much we do for how little you pay, there’s a sales pitch,” he said. “If you look at our numbers, they offer a lot of services that residents don’t see. Residents expect to see maintaining roads, but what they don’t see is what they pay for such as social services, home for the aged, libraries, recreation, planning, and building department, all kinds of things that municipalities offer for the dollar you pay when you look at that value, you have to be pretty impressed.”
As for when the budget will be approved, the timeline comes down to how council wishes to proceed.
“A lot of municipalities look at the budget document as a strategic document and if there is a trust in their staffing on where their priorities are, it can be a fairly short process and we can provide them with options based on what their needs are,” Barbeau said. “Right now we aren’t at that discussion level, we’re going through all of the documentation and that takes time.”
“I will be providing a document with options and strategic decision points for council,” Barbeau continued. “If they want to reduce it to ‘x’ percentage, I would then provide them with options to meet their needs as best we can while having to reduce a few issues or expectations in certain areas. If council decides to go back and forth themselves, they can end up spinning their wheels a bit. If they come together and start looking at what they want to do, I can bring them there fairly quickly.”