Thank you to all the residents who participated in the 2022 budget deliberation process, through the Over to You page on the city website or by emailing us directly. You told us that you wanted us to keep property tax increases down, take care of our most vulnerable citizens, respond to climate change, and “fix the roads.”
Taking your input into account, we have taken a fresh look at our community’s priorities and aligned our budget to carry out those priorities.
We have responded by not simply cutting funding, or by automatically raising taxes, but by reallocating funding from one service to another to build capacity where you told us it is most desired and/or of benefit to the most residents.
City council met for roughly 19 hours over five evenings to review, adjust and pass next year’s operating and capital budgets. This was in addition to time spent reading the more than 500-page budget document and preparing questions for the city’s finance staff.
We all realize that there are costs to delivering the many services that the city provides – some of these costs we have control over and some we do not.
Council controls investments in renewing our roads, buildings and pipes, etc. Next year, council will be responding to your calls for better roads by investing approximately $63.3 million in this priority, as well as $134.5 million in buildings, water and sewer pipes and vehicles (including transit).
Renewing Greater Sudbury’s aging assets requires significant levels of funding, and we recognize that we need to keep at it year over year.
Other services — such as police, fire and EMS that make up fully one-third of property tax bills — we all hope we will never have to use, but we all contribute to their funding so they are there for us if and when we need them.
Approximately half of the property tax increase of 3.1 per cent is outside council’s control. These include: the police services budget (4.7-per-cent increase); Public Health Sudbury budget (5-per-cent increase); and any provincially mandated programs that we are required to deliver.
And like you, council has no control over the current 4.7-per-cent rate of inflation, the 13.6-per-cent rise in construction costs, or the increases to insurance, gas and heating bills that we are all experiencing.
With the 2022 budget, council has also tried to respond to important issues that are impacting municipalities across the country — homelessness, opioid crisis, climate change — through the following projects:
- Transitional housing with clinical supports
- Affordable housing project on Sparks Street
- Supervised consumption site in partnership with Public Health & Access AIDS
- Paris-Notre Dame Bikeway (contingent on federal funding)
- Transit electrification background work
- LED lighting in our parks
- Increased catch basin cleaning for the Ramsey Lake watershed area to protect the drinking water of 60,000 residents.
We are all trying to function through a pandemic. Thank you for the compassion, resilience and generosity that you have demonstrated in so many ways since March 2020.
Greater Sudbury is a strong and compassionate community, which survives and grows by respecting and considering differences of opinion, then working together to map the way forward.
We look forward to continuing to hear from and work with you in the year ahead, and hope you are all able to find the time to recharge over the holiday season.
Take care and stay well.
Deb McIntosh is the Greater Sudbury city councillor for Ward 9 while Mike Jakubo is the councillor for Ward 7.
