Ratepayers could face 4.92% tax hike
“Show us the money.”
That’s the ask from municipal officials to the provincial government over a shortfall in Ontario Community Infrastructure Funding (OCIF) heading into this year’s municipal budget proceedings.
It’s not a small shortage, according to Chatham-Kent officials. In percentages, the shortfall equates to two per cent of the proposed 4.92-per-cent increase tabled to council at the Nov. 5 budget update.
In dollars, it represents a difference of $19.3 million.
A year.
“You see the order of magnitude we’re dealing with here,” Mayor Darrin Canniff said. “If this was a million bucks, we wouldn’t be talking about it. This is annual funding. Every year, we should be getting $19 million more. It’s a huge number.”
OCIF funding is distributed by the province to all but the larger urban centres in Ontario. And in all cases but three municipalities – Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Chatham-Kent – it’s done by a formula based on a municipality’s asset management information.
“The province comes up with the formula and says, ‘Based on all your assets that you have, this is what we should be funding,” Canniff said. “Four hundred and 20 municipalities all get this formula. Except for three communities in Ontario that don’t. And it just so happens we are over 100,000 people so they put this arbitrary cap of $10 million (what Chatham-Kent receives in OCIF cash annually).”
Gord Quinton, chief financial officer for C-K, said under OCIF, there is a cap in place that prevents any one municipality from receiving more than 2.5 per cent of the $400-million OCIF pot.
But municipal officials said the provincial formula, if applied without that cap, would mean Chatham-Kent should receive $29.3 million a year in OCIF cash, hence the $19.3-million disparity.
“We are short-changed $19.3 million,” the mayor said. “It’s their formula, not ours. We’re just asking the province to step up and treat us fairly. Get rid of that cap.”
Nearby comparisons aren’t even close. Lambton County receives $18.4 million annually from OCIF; Essex, not including Windsor, gets $15.4 million. Even Elgin County receives $13.1 million. All are significantly smaller geographically, with significantly less in terms of asset and infrastructure needs, than Chatham-Kent. Here, we have less than one per cent of the province’s population, but have to address the maintenance of nearly five per cent of the bridges in Ontario and 20 per cent of the rural drains, for example.
“All the formulas say we should get much, much more,” Brock McGregor, a Chatham councillor and chair of the municipal budget committee, said. “The past three years, the shortage of OCIF funding is almost $50 million from the province that we should have received, but we haven’t. It’s impacting agriculture in our community, it’s impacting investment into our community and it’s something we’re highlighting in this budget.”
Also revealed during the Nov. 5 budget presentation were disparities in funding distribution in other areas.
For example, provincial funding to help move people out of homeless encampments saw C-K receive $282,000 provincial dollars, while Lambton County and Sarnia received more than 10 times that amount, and Elgin County and St. Thomas scooped up even more at $4.1 million.
A program for the province to provide funding to upgrade water and wastewater infrastructure to help services be in place for home construction saw C-K shut out, while neighbours reaped rewards. Essex County received $88 million; Lambton County $44 million, and Elgin County got $26 million.
“It makes no sense,” Quinton said.
Meanwhile, the taxpayers face the aforementioned 4.92-per-cent tax increase. Two per cent of that is attributed to the OCIF shortfall, while the remainder is comprised of maintaining services, asset management, social investments and changes to services.
Initially, as part of the four-year budget process to which the municipality is now adhering, ratepayers were facing an 8.77-per-cent increase. Canniff said administration was able to whittle 4.14 per cent out through efficiencies.
McGregor said those savings translate to about $9.5 million.
“It’s really a long process that staff goes through to identify areas of savings. Some are small savings that add up,” he said. “some are changes to insurance premiums, debt retirement at the Bloomfield Business Park, etc. It’s a pretty long list, but all those things add up.”
Canniff and CAO Michael Duben stressed that no services, rural or urban, were cut.
In the meantime, the municipality will continue to lobby the Ford government for a change to how OCIF cash flows to Chatham-Kent. The province will likely deliver a new budget next spring.
Despite the shortfall, Canniff said the municipality is faring well.
“We’re in good financial health. Growth – we can grow. We need to grow. We need to provide assets people want,” he said. We need to give people reasons why they should move here, why businesses should locate here. But we’re being held back (by OCIF).”
