Significant cuts needed to avoid double-digit property tax hike in 2025: Region

The Region of Waterloo is facing a potential 10 to 12 per cent tax increase in 2025 if it can’t find nearly $8 million in cost savings between now and the end of the year.

That will, of course, mean cuts.

Region of Waterloo staff are looking to reach a property tax increase of around 8 per cent by the end of this process in December.

The budget was discussed at a Region of Waterloo Strategic Planning and Budget Committee on Wednesday. The blueprint is being drawn up for presentation on Oct. 30.

Those numbers don’t include the Waterloo Regional Police Service’s (WRPS) budget, which was discussed at a separate board meeting on Wednesday. The force is looking at a potential 9 per cent increase to its portion of property taxes. Those are also preliminary numbers.

Connie MacDonald, the chief strategy and communications officer at the Region of Waterloo, noted that while a tax increase on the higher end would set the region up for success in future years while also maintaining services, a lower tax increase might have negative consequences going forward.

“A tax increase at the 8 per cent level would involve a reduction of service, which wouldn’t necessarily set us up to meet the growing needs of the community and the services they rely on into the future,” said MacDonald.

Inflation and cost escalation are driving factors behind staff’s difficulties.

Services that have been discussed at length this year like the Plan to End Chronic Homelessness could be put on the backburner as part of staff’s recommendations that would limit a tax increase.

To chip away at the larger tax increases, the Strategic Planning and Budget Subcommittee recommended deferring all service expansions that don’t generate revenue to offset future costs, looking at ways they can use the tax stabilization reserves to lower the burden those large one-time expenditures have on taxpayers, and looking at service expansions that include cost-sharing.

The next opportunity for public input comes on Nov. 6, and then again on Nov. 27.

The final draft of the budget will be presented to the Region of Waterloo Council on Dec. 11.