“The chickens have come home to roost.” This proverbial expression conveys that bad deeds or mistakes will eventually catch up with the person(s) making them. My fear for our city’s finances and implications to property taxes, user fees and service levels was a driving force in my decision to run council in 2022. One year into my term and I know with certainty my concerns were warranted.
Our reserves are running low. Our infrastructure — roads, arenas, pools, water and sewer systems — is in very poor condition. And, our operating costs are rising at an alarming rate, for a number of reasons, principally increase in costs for emergency services.
How did it come to this? A historic focus on artificially keeping taxes low by deferring maintenance of our infrastructure and using up reserves to cover operating costs in combination with high inflation and increased costs of consumables.
So now, the chickens have come home to roost.
This council, with leadership from our new mayor, is forced to make difficult decisions to address the financial and infrastructure challenges over the next few years. We cannot defer these projects and associated costs any longer. In parallel, we’ll be working to foster our city’s growth, attract new jobs and increase new revenues to our tax levy. Our goal is to eventually ease the financial burden on our residents who pay property taxes and user fees.
But make no mistake, we know the next couple of years will be challenging. We understand that we’re in unprecedented financial times. The decisions we’re making may not be popular, and we’re not taking them lightly. The right path isn’t always the easy path. We’re taking great responsibility to ensure we’re back on course to be the “Greatest” version of the City of Greater Sudbury.
Mike Parent is the Greater Sudbury city councillor for Ward 5.
