Burlington City Council is looking at other means of “income” for the city rather than relying on taxpayer dollars.
Property taxes and user fees – for things like transit, swimming activities or ice rentals – are about the only way any Ontario city can raise funds; of course, that wouldn’t be enough cash to operate a city.
Municipalities count on provincial and federal levels of government to transfer funds for programs and services. The trouble is, the latter is not a set amount at a given time.
For each dollar collected in taxes, the federal government gets 47 cents, the province of Ontario gets 44 cents, and Ontario cities get 9 cents.
To address this, councillors agreed at Tuesday's regular meeting of council to support the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) to engage the federal and provincial governments to develop a growth framework that looks at new sources of municipal revenue. Council was told it would include predictable intergovernmental transfers, new direct taxation powers or provide municipalities with a larger share of existing revenue streams.
The goal would be to have financing linked to items such as national population growth, inflation, economic growth and the role of Canadian municipalities.
Council heard that municipalities own and operate 60 per cent of the country’s core public infrastructure. That means Burlington, like other municipalities, is responsible for the full lifecycle costs of operating, maintaining and replacing capital assets: roads, bridges, water treatment facilities and public transit systems.
In addition, the city has taken on new responsibilities such as health and social services, housing and economic development - and the continued responsibilities of items like policing, waste management and water and wastewater services, all of which are becoming more costly.
In supporting the motion, council realizes municipalities are constrained in being able to generate revenue to fund capital and operating expenses. Property taxes are an unsuitable and unsustainable tool to support essential services, maintain critical infrastructure, accommodate growing populations, and contribute to economic growth.
Ward 3 councillor Rory Nisan put it more succinctly: “The new fiscal framework is the number one item of the Federation of Canadian municipalities this year.
“It's become clear as we come out of COVID and deal with costs, the cost of living and the incredible cost to local municipalities,” he said.
“The pressures on our budgets mean that we need a new way to fund how we do business,” he continued. “We have a very high burden and very little capacity to raise funding.”
He said everyone needs to work together, and by approving the fiscal framework, it will help them in the “challenging budget cycles that we face.”
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward agreed wholeheartedly.
“You know, there's a saying that the federal government has all the money, the provincial government has all the power, and municipalities have all the problems. And we are trying to solve an increasingly complex array of issues at the municipal level on nine cents on the dollar of tax collected.
“We do receive government transfers from both the federal and provincial government. However, it's unpredictable. We can't plan, we don't know if we're going to get our full ask, part of our ask or none of our ask.”
She gave an example, using the Housing Accelerator Fund from the federal government with $70-plus million going to London.
Meed Ward said the city has asked for $44 million, but doesn’t know if they will get any, all or none of that.
“But that is not the way to build great cities,” Meed Ward said. “It does not allow us to plan for the very long time horizon that some of these infrastructure projects take. And we simply don't have the funding, and we cannot property-tax our way out of this.
"The money is there, but it is not flowing in a timely and efficient manner to municipalities. So this conversation is long overdue. The framework model hasn't changed in 100 years, but our community certainly has, and the issues and problems that we're dealing with, especially in an era of climate change, have fundamentally changed, and we need to as well.”
Added Ward 5 councillor Paul Sharman: “We really need to make sure we have a proper distribution of taxes based on the needs of our communities, which are fully understood and becoming increasingly more challenging, as we already know, related to climate change and population growth and infrastructure shortages and infrastructure not being able to be maintained. After all, we have a $500 million infrastructure renewal, maintenance problem that has to be solved.
“This is not going to be solved by us begging, ‘Please can I have some money?’ No, we need this.”
Council will send a copy of the motion to MPPs and MPs, as well as finance ministers.
Named the New Growth Framework for Canadian Municipalities Resolution, it was adopted at the annual conference earlier this year in Toronto.
