City facing $1.9-million tax-supported deficit from 2023
The office of the city treasurer is recommending spending $1 million from Thunder Bay’s WSIB reserve to help cover a portion of the municipality’s $1.9-million 2023 tax-supported operating deficit.
The deficit represents a 0.8 per cent share of the Thunder Bay’s $218.4 million 2023 municipal tax levy.
The remaining $900,000 would be transferred from the stabilization reserve.
The biggest chunk of the deficit appears to come from corporate expenditures, which totalled over $4.7 million more than what was budgeted for, according to a report expected to be presented to city council during Monday night’s committee of the whole meeting.
Thunder Bay Police Services presented $2.8 million in overspending to the budget, which could have been considerably higher if not for $500,000 in provincial grants.
The embattled Thunder Bay Police Services Board cost the city $300,000 more than planned, mostly due to higher legal costs.
The city’s recreation and culture department had a $1.1-million shortfall blamed on increases to the non-affiliate pay grid and major maintenance projects at the Canada Games Complex, Fort William Stadium and Port Arthur Stadium.
Also on the negative side of the ledger was Thunder Bay Fire Rescue, which had an unfavourable variance of $800,000, and the engineering and operations department came up $900,000 short, mainly due to higher expenditures on road surface maintenance, traffic control, and street lighting contract services needed because of significant staff shortages.
Favourable tax-supported variances included corporate revenue ($2.9 million), corporate information technology ($500,000), Superior North EMS ($600,000), child care ($700,000), licensing and enforcement ($500,000) and long-term care and senior services ($900,000).
Rate-supported operations had an overall favourable variance of $1.5 million.
The extra money is expected to be transferred to respective reserve funds in accordance with city bylaws.
The city’s tax-supported reserve and reserve fund balance now sits at $186.6 million, a growth of $18.4 million over 2022. – Tbnewswatch,com
article website here
Once again we are seeing how our high salaried residents of City Hall are not telling us the exact costs of running this city when it comes to set the budget. I maintain that the cost to run this city is much higher than the annual taxes paid by the citizens of the city. All money spent by City Hall comes from taxpayers (except the TbayTel dividend) . Those taxpayers may be municipal, provincial or federal. Money taken from the WSIB reserve and the stabilization reserve will have to be replaced at some time. Next year? Just kicking the can down the road.
TbayTel hands the city $18 million of free cash annually. That is a tax paid by customers of TbayTel on top of the other taxes they pay to the city, province and federal government. Could the company lower its prices to its customers? It could but the beast which is the City of Thunder Bay’s budget needs to be fed. Since its inception in 2004, Tbaytel has returned more than $357.9 million in dividends to the city.
Look around the city. Can you see where that money was spent? Do you see anything that almost half a billion dollars if free money has paid to build? Anything? Sports plex? Recreation trails? New parks? Any improvement to quality of life? No. All you hear is that “we can’t afford it”. No matter what the conversation is, we can’t afford it. We always need senior levels of government to give us money for EVERYTHING. No money from Queens Park or Parliament Hill, then we can’t have it. Why is that? Why not tax the people to pay for the “must haves” and use the dividend to buy things that are “nice to have”? Things that add to the city’s quality of life?
We have no idea what the REAL cost is to run the City of Thunder Bay. What we DO know is that it is MUCH more than the annual tax levy. The taxpayer needs to know how much more. What costs are the city’s politicians and administrators hiding?