At 12/12 Council there will be presentation of the budget for 2017. The draft budget proposes a property tax increase of 2.9%; when blended with York Region’s and the anticipated provincial education tax the overall tax increase is 2.32%; for a property assessed at $664,000 this amounts to an increase of $143.  One of the very significant decisions in this budget is the capital programs; the draft recommends a capital program of $40.9 million in 2017 and $30.6 million in 2018.  A second important decision is about our contributions to infrastructure reserves; this has been a focus since I joined Council and I am glad to see our allocation increasing.

For this budget, for the first time Staff is asking Council to approve both 2017 and 2018 capital programs.  Rationale for such is to allow for most effective planning of resources and to improve the value for bids on our projects.  I fully support this.    Another change is the amount of information being given in the capital budget; other years estimates were provided for each project.  As it has been observed that bids on projects tend to be very consistent with information provided in the budget this practice has been changed; what you will now see is the list of project but only the subtotals for each group.

If you are interested in why your property tax rate is what it is I recommend that you attend 12/12 council meeting if you can.  I anticipate that the presentation on the budget will begin about 6:30.  As noted in the Staff report Council will not be approving the budget until the January 23rd 2017 Council agenda; up until then you can ask questions and make comments either to myself or to Finance Staff. For the latter contact the Finance Director, Allan Evelyn aevelyn@king.ca.  For both the Staff report and the capital project lists click here and scroll down to the 3rd agenda item.