Barrie’s council is backing the mayor’s 2024 budget proposal.
On Wednesday, its elected members all voted in favour of adopting a $342.6 plan expected to keep the city’s operational expenses flat for the third year in a row.
“It is a financially difficult time for many families and I think we’ve been able to strike a really strong balance for this year where we’re continuing with that zero per cent [increase] in operations [spending],” the mayor said after the vote.
The plan details how civic programs, services and infrastructure projects will be funded, though the final budgets for the city’s police and libraries as well as for services provided by Simcoe County are not included and will be finalized in the coming months.
This is the first year Nuttall has been personally responsible for issuing a budget proposal using the strong mayor powers vested in his office by the province late last year. Under the strong mayor legislation, mayors propose budgets, written in consultation with city staff, to councils.
Nuttall also took the opportunity to thank city staffers involved in putting the budget proposal together. “I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank the many, many, many, many people across the corporation who put in hours and hours and hours and hours of time to make it easy for the eleven of us. Your work doesn’t go unseen — it is recognized.”
The spending plan also features what the mayor describes as a “very robust infrastructure plan” increasing spending on fire and emergency services, curbside collection, snow clearing, road repairs, public transit, parks and water treatment. These rises are expected to be offset by cost-saving measures.
“It took a lot, especially given the financial conditions we’re facing today. It is a financially difficult time for many families and I think we’ve been able to strike a really strong balance for this year where we’re continuing with that zero per cent with operations, we’re going forward with a very robust infrastructure plan.”
These investments will come with a modest tax increase for the city’s home owners. Next year, the city will collect $197.8 million from home owners. For each million dollars in assessed property value, bills will rise by about $270 — or, roughly, two per cent. With year-over-year inflation at two per cent, property taxes will remain flat in real terms.
“On the local level, what we’ve been trying to do is to control taxation and control spending and to bring forward a budget that doesn’t just grow at the rates of other municipalities. When you look at municipalities around us, they’re hitting six, seven, eight per cent tax increases this year,” Nuttall said during an interview before the vote.
While it is not clear which specific municipalities he was referring to, unusually expensive budget plans and steep tax increases have been announced by several Ontario cities of similar size to Barrie. Brampton is expected to see its spending grow by 6.4 per cent next year while Windsor’s property taxes are set to rise by 7.4 per cent.
He added that during his time in office, the city’s fiscal position had improved alongside its credit rating, and that this was allowing it to move forward on projects that had waited on the back burner for decades. “The main difference is that we’ve been able to really right-size the finances. . . we’re likely moving to a triple-A rating and that will reduce our debt costs and give us more money to spend on the things people expect.”
Among these long-stalled projects, he noted that the Barrie Performing Arts Centre, first proposed when he was one year old, only began receiving investments during his tenure. The 2025 budget plan sets aside $2.5 million in contributions to the project and similar investments are expected to be made each year through 2029. Despite this, the budget document notes that more funding will be needed to resolve a forecast gap before construction can move forward.
While speaking with the Barrie Compass, Nuttall praised the prudence and dedication of city staff in their efforts to find efficiencies and new sources of revenue. “The staff are the ones who made this happen. . . Over three years, the tax savings from those will equate to about $8 million — [equivalent to] about a three per cent increase to property taxes.”
The 2025 budget proposal is likely to be officially adopted next week, following a largely ceremonial ratification vote.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the 2025 budget plan was Nuttall’s second strong mayor budget rather than his first.
