After watching the Council deliberate at their first budget meeting on Tuesday, November 12, I was curious as to why there were no obvious cuts to the budget. The CFO, Gord Quinton’s recommendations to council and the individual councilors’ recommendations can be found on the Chatham-Kent Website under Budget Committee Meeting – November 13, 2024. Make sure you read all the attachments related to Item 7.
When the administration put together their budget recommendations, they compared CK to other cities paying similar property tax, stating that we are paying taxes relative to these others. But what makes these others different is that they have industry and many more commercial businesses to help carry the tax load, whereas CK has to rely on residential taxpayers.
Some businesses in CK are not paying their fair share of taxes because they’ve been given special rates due to “Downtown Revitalization” or a break in taxes to lure the businesses to CK. That’s fair, but it’s at the expense of the rest of us. How long will their special privileges last? And what are admin and council doing to entice industry to come to Chatham-Kent to help offload residential taxpayers? We could use the jobs, and the tax dollars.
Another difference between these other cities are the number of councilors. Windsor has 10 (population 230K), Sudbury 12 (pop.166K), London 14 (pop. 422K) and Chatham-Kent 17 (pop.104K). Perhaps that’s a starting point to our fiscal cuts?
Another place to cut, and only a couple councilors mentioned it in their list, is by department. Every department within CK, including Police, Fire, etc. should reduce by 10% of their expenses (including staffing). The municipality as a whole should have a hiring freeze on and freeze wages for the next two years.
If they can’t find anywhere to make cuts, find someone unbiased to do so. Perhaps it’s time to bring in an outsider to help find efficiencies? They need to make the hard calls in these hard times, or they are going to have to increase their budget for the homeless situation as it will continue to rise.
From the budget increases in the CFO’s report, increases in taxes of 27.7% over the years 2024-2027 will find many more of us homeless, sad to say.
Karen Pynenbrouck
