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Council candidates propose ways to stretch Grand Valley’s tax dollars

October 22, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS

The struggle of most families to thrive in these difficult economic years is shared by municipal councils.

And the people who hope to steer Grand Valley through the financial hurly-burly shared some of their ideas during an all-candidates meeting Oct. 14.

Eligible voters go to the polls to mark ballots Oct. 26.

Paul Latam has locked horns for the mayor’s job at the head of council against the incumbent, Steve Soloman.

For the deputy mayor job, Martin Kouyoumdjian and Jennifer Tovell are on the ballot with incumbent candidate Philip Rentsch.

Charlie Brady, Parul Burge, Joshua King, and Steve Miles are on the hustings for three councillor seats.

Grand Valley’s property taxes have increased over recent years. The evening’s first question was whether or not the level of municipal services and amenities increased in line with the taxes. Town staffing levels and administrative costs have also been on the rise.

Soloman said the town’s industrial properties will be developed as a means to increase tax revenue from that sector.

“Right now I don’t think we are getting the services that are equal to what the taxes are,” he said.

And that deserves a long look by the next council.

Kouyoumdjian said Grand Valley residents do shell out a lot in taxes. But there are ways to maximize every dollar that’s spent, he said.

The town has an opportunity to look at its bids and tenders and move more toward an open process, he said.

“Every time we have work that needs to be done in Grand Valley, I think we should go and put that work out on public Ontario websites for bids and tenders and have a fair and open process to do that,” Kouyoumdjian said.

He said there is money that can be availed of in a number of grants for which the municipality hasn’t applied.

Tovell agreed that a further developed industrial park will alleviate some of the pressure on residential taxpayers.

“But I do think it’s fair to assume that a new council has an opportunity to review service levels and ensure that our staffing matches the services that we’re providing and find efficiencies so that we could invest in other services for our residents,” she said. “I think that’s the straight and narrow of it.”

Rentsch said nobody enjoys paying taxes. Last year, he forked over about $11,500 in taxes, he said.

“I understand that paying taxes hurts and you’ve got to find the money somewhere,” he said. “At the same time, we are a small municipality and we are disadvantaged because everything we do costs us more than bigger municipalities.”

“Municipalities, businesses, they all work the same way,” Rentsch continued. “It’s simply going to cost us more to provide the minimum.”

King said he can’t promise he can cut taxes today, but he won’t be the “money-saving hero today who hands the next council a bigger bill.”

Brady said looking at how property tax is spent is key. Grand Valley has a lot of infrastructure, and roads require a lot of the municipal budget. If the town doesn’t manage its roads proactively, residents will have to pay much more, Brady said.

“What we need to do as a town is to make sure that we’re addressing our maintenance issues as fast as possible and proactively,” he said. “Not waiting for things to snowball on us where it’s going to cost us three, four times more.”

Miles said business and government have become more complex.

“And with that comes costs,” he said.

The next big project for council is to look into what is being spent within the town to make sure it matches what is wanted from the expenditure.

“That means reviewing everything that we do,” he said.

Miles suggested some resources may be able to be shared among neighbouring municipalities.

“Can we share different offices, and different people and jobs with the other small communities around us so all of us get some efficiencies out of that?” he said.

Latam suggested that bylaw enforcement officers may be effective working with Grand Valley as well as Amaranth and East Garafraxa. He included the parks and recreation operations as a place where some efficiencies may be found.

Latam said he requested an internal audit of the Public Works’ snow removal operations during the last budget discussions.

“We exceed the minimum maintenance standards so is there efficiencies?” he said. “Is there a way in Public Works that we can do things better and more efficient? Next term is going to take a lot of tough discussions of council and staff.”

Burge shared the idea of increasing the commercial tax base as a means to provide a break to residential taxpayers. And she gave a nod to the idea of reconsidering how bids and tenders are handled and to increasing efforts to avail of all available grant money.

She’s a big fan of comparing municipalities, Burge said.

“So comparing how other municipalities solve similar kind of problems, we’ll have to look into that and learn from them,” she said.

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