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Having taxpayers foot the bill is unsustainable: Mono mayor

March 6, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS

Mono staff never cease the search for ways to lower municipal taxes.

Mono resident Rob Martellacci asked town council during its Feb. 25 meeting what is being done to lower taxes. He asked if anybody on council uses their imagination to find ways to reduce spending and to find opportunities to lower taxes.

Taxpayers were handed a 13.2 per cent tax increase over last year when the 2025 municipal operating and capital budget was tabled.

Mayor John Creelman said the municipal budget’s rough draft is the version that shows what the municipality could accomplish if money wasn’t an obstacle.

But the simple fact is that money is a factor in what the town can do.

“We worked very hard to bring the (tax) increase down to an amount which none of us, I think, were thrilled with,” Creelman said. “Anyone having watched council in the last two meetings is aware that we’ve mandated staff to review all sources of revenue and fees.”

Staff are considering fees with an eye on ensuring municipal fees are comparable with other neighbouring centres.

“We don’t stop trying to find opportunities to save money,” the mayor said. “It’s not that we like raising taxes. Far from it.”

“I think our taxpayers should know that our biggest expenditure is roads,” Deputy Mayor Fred Nix.

The town conducted a service delivery review last year that included an evaluation of its road network.

“The bottom line was that if we want to maintain this level of service, we’re actually not spending enough on roads,” Nix said.

And that’s where council could get into a “little bit of a tussle” with Matt Doner, the town’s public works manager, he said.

The town learned in September 2024 that it needs to invest an extra $600,000 annually on roads.

The 2024 Road Management Plan identified all Mono roads that require attention within a 10-year period. It spelled out the recommended action for rehabilitation, preventative maintenance, and the timing and financial impact of the best course of action to maintain roads.

The municipality has about 250 kilometres of gravel, asphalt, and concrete roads in its inventory.

The assessment was based on a rating system developed by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and allowed the town to update its existing road inventory, condition indexes, and define the maintenance and capital requirements over a 10-year period.

The financial analysis indicated that an average annual capital and maintenance budget increase of $600,000 is required to maintain the overall road network condition at the current level.

That much extra money for roads in the 2024 capital budget would have raised the tax levy increase by about 12 per cent.

“That was a professional, technical engineering study,” Nix said. “If you want the roads just kept at the level they are now, unfortunately it costs money and we actually should spend more money on those roads.”

Councillor Elaine Capes said council and staff worked very hard to table the smallest tax increase they could in the 2025 municipal operating and capital budget.

“But I want everybody to know I have a chart and Mono still has the lowest tax rate in Dufferin County as far as I know,” Capes said, and added that she hasn’t seen tax rates faced by residents of Amaranth, Grand Valley, or Melanchthon.

“But of the others, we are still below in terms of the actual tax rate.”

Coun. Melinda Davie said those municipalities increased their tax rates “over the last number of years” when Mono didn’t.

“If you average it out over what’s been paid, our large increase this year is because we’ve kept it down over many, many years,” Davie said.

“The notion that the property taxpayer is expected to sustain municipalities going forward is untenable,” Creelman said. “There’s got to be a new arrangement with the provincial government and some realignment of who does what and who pays for what.”

He said he had hoped that topic would have been discussed during the recent all-candidates debate as part of the provincial election for Dufferin-Caledon’s seat in the legislature.

“Unfortunately, there was one individual who chose not to participate,” Creelman said.

There seemed to have been a trend during the last election in which Progressive Conservative candidates opted not to debate their challengers in public forums.

“If we don’t raise our municipal taxes to provide services and we want money from the province to do it, then that just means your provincial portion of your taxes will go up,” Davie said. “There is no other payer except us all and I think that’s what people really need to understand.”

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