WELLINGTON NORTH – It took many hours of debate and discussion but Wellington North council has nailed down what this year’s budget increase is going to look like.
Should council ratify this at its next meeting, residents will be facing an 8.9 per cent increase after council approved collecting an additional $350,000 from taxpayers specifically to pay for a potential new Mount Forest pool — as part of an eight year financial plan that includes fundraising — on top of the rest of the operating and capital budget.
This would represent an additional $144.64 on the tax bill of an average assessed home.
Council gave this direction to staff after a gruelling three-hour debate on including or removing some items from the budget and some final thoughts on what to do with the $5.3 million Mount Forest pool replacement project.
Despite the long discussion at a Monday evening meeting, council landed on exactly what staff had recommended with no changes.
Township treasurer Farhad Hossain presented a new budget ask at the meeting after previous ones led to a lack of consensus among councillors.
In the revised version, staff recommended adding two full-time equivalent staff, rather than three, funded 65 per cent through reserves with phase two of the Arthur Wastewater Treatment Plant deferred along with the purchase of two pickup trucks among other reduced capital projects.
This was landing the tax increase at 4.87 per cent but the Mount Forest pool had to be considered as well.
The recommended option from staff was to set the fundraising target for the project at $2.5 million and taxpayer contribution at $2.8 million. This would mean collecting an additional $350,000 per year for eight years, about a four per cent increase either on top of the levy or as a special levy.
Mayor Andy Lennox said he had been feeling discouraged after recent budget meetings, feeling like there was not a lot of leadership being shown when tough decisions had to be made to balance pressures the municipality is facing.
“There’s no magic money tree that will pay for the things we want, it’s not realistic for us to ask for more items to be added to the budget without offering what things we are prepared to trade off,” Lennox said.
With that said, councillors pitched some items they desired to see changed or funded in some other way such as deferring the design on a new fire hall in Mount Forest, paving Concession 4 North, holding off on purchasing a new backhoe and snow plow and not using reserves to pay for new staff positions.
When put to a vote after a lengthy back-and-forth discussion, no changes resulted. A new fire hall will be designed, the town will purchase a new backhoe and snow plow, reserve will be used to fund some of two new staff positions and Concession 4 North will remain unpaved.
The Mount Forest pool was another beast entirely as council continued to debate the merit of replacing a pool closed since 2021 and how they were uncomfortable with the costs as they had been over the course of many meetings for months.
Lennox said without a funding plan, staff will not be going further with the project or spending more on the project and he felt it was time to come to a decision.
“We’ve been dithering on this project for months, I don’t think the people we represent expect us to continue in that format,” Lennox said. “If we’re not going to make a decision today, so be it but we need to have a plan of how we’re going to make the decision … and we need to stick to it.”
Coun. Lisa Hern struggled with a decision as she had heard from more people who were against the pool than for it.
“I have had some calls and people say ‘I can’t afford formula … you know I can’t afford a pool,’” Hern said.
Coun. Steve McCabe asked if there was any way to bring forward a scaled-back version of the project while still having a viable pool.
“We’ve already pared it down from what we were talking about a year ago, but certainly if council can come to terms with what they think they like, then we can put that to the architect,” said Matt Aston, director of operations. “But I have no reason to believe that what’s been put forward is extravagant.”
Coun. Sherry Burke didn’t want to see the project scaled back any more as she felt it risked not being able to accommodate the expected growth in Mount Forest. She repeatedly said throughout the meeting that asking residents and a committee to fundraise $2.5 million was an unreasonable ask.
“I don’t know how many other ways to say it, I would like to see what could be funded through reserves to help ease the tax burden and the fundraising burden that is being asked,” Burke said.
When it came down to a vote, council reluctantly voted 4-1 in favour of staff’s recommended course of action with Burke against.
In another vote, council decided to include it in the general levy rather than create a special tax levy.
