Addington Highlands Settles On 5.3% Tax Increase

Craig Bakay | Mar 29, 2023

Addington Highlands Council has held two special meetings since its regular meeting March 21, the first being a presentation of the draft 2023 budget March 23 and the second a presentation from Arcadis IBI Group on the Township Official Plan update March 27.

At the end of budget deliberations, Council decided on a 5.3 per cent increase to the amount to be levied by taxation ($3,457,740) which represents $47.83 more per each $100,000 of assessment for taxpayers.

When CAO/Clerk-Treasurer Christine Reed first started crunching numbers for the 2023 budget on the Sunday before the presentation meeting, she was astonished to see a percentage increase in taxation in the mid-20s.

Knowing that wouldn’t fly, she cornered Roads and Waste Supervisor Brett Reavie in the office and hammered the budget down to 13.65 per cent in the net amount to levy of $3,731,740.15. That represents a 12.7 per cent increase to the tax rate which would translate to a $79.96 per every $100,000 of assessment for ratepayers.

“That’s a tough sell,” said Coun. Ken Hook.

However, those figures don’t tell the whole story.

First, last year’s derecho cost the Township about $721,000 in cleanup costs, which came from General Surplus. The Township found out Monday that they’d be getting that back from the MDRA and another program. But, General Surplus represents the Township operating funds for the year and since they’ve been dipping into it for the past four years to mitigate the tax rate, dipping into it again seemed unpalatable.

“In my view, you wouldn’t want to reduce it (the increase) to 3 per cent because you’d just be setting yourself up for disaster next year,” said Dep. Reeve Tony Fritsch. “I’m thinking in the 7-8 per cent range.”

But others weren’t.

“I personally would like to see it under 6 per cent,” said Coun. Helen Yanch.

Reed and Dep. Treasurer Natalie Tryon successfully argued for taking some funds out of General Surplus (which ended up being $175,000).

Reavie proposed doing more of the work on Hartsmere Road in house and came up with a $50,000 cut.

Fire Chief Casey Cuddy cut $24,000 from his budget.

Chief Building Official David Twiddy suggested the $27,000 pigeon netting project for the Flinton Arena could be put off for another year but Yanch wouldn’t hear of it.

Twiddy then proposed putting off reshingling the Northbrook Medical Centre roof for another year but Reed shot that down.

“With our luck, we’d eliminate that from the budget and it would start to leak tomorrow,” Reed said.

“Or a wind would come up and blow off a bunch of shingles,” said Reeve Henry Hogg.

“I know, but roads and fire were contributing so I was feeling a little left out,” said Twiddy.

Regardless, the 5.3 per cent tax increase seemed to be something everybody could live with.

“Over the past 11 years, we’ve had a lot of years at zero increase and years at just over 2 per cent,” Reed said. “We’ve only had three years where we were over 2 per cent (5.15 in 2017, 2.45 in 2018 and 3.36 in 2022.)”

“I think we all knew it was going to be a pretty tough year,” said Coun, Kirby Thompson. “Inflation’s running pretty high (but) I’m thinking next year might be a better year — all that stuff is going to taper off.”

“But prices are never going back to what they were last year,” said Hogg.

Official Plan

Council welcomed planners Mark Touw and Nancy Wartman from Arcadis IBI Group for an update on planned changes to the Township Official Plan March 27.

“This project got underway in the fall of 2021 but we had to wait for the County to get started on its OP and growth analysis,” Wartman said.

Not much growth is expected in Addington Highlands in the foreseeable future, she said. Still, there are things that a new OP will address such as redrawing hamlet boundaries to conform with lot lines, guidelines for short-term rentals, houseboats and severances.

She said the full-time population of the Township in 2021 was 2,534 and there is about the same in seasonal population but that could be increasing as what were once vacation and summer homes are seeing more use.

The new OP is expected in summer of 2023 and there will be an open house for public feedback before that.