The proposed 2020 tax increase for Chatham-Kent has been lowered to 3.36 per cent after some lengthy debate from council.
The tax increase was originally proposed at 4.99 per cent in the draft budget, which was initially reduced to 4.71 per cent on Tuesday. During the second night of deliberations on Wednesday, council got it down to 3.36 per cent.
On Wednesday, the 2020 capital budget was approved, which includes $13.596 million in projects such as improvements to the intersection at Queen's Line and Merlin Road, a Keil Drive extension and upgrades to the Bloomfield Business Park.
Councillor Doug Sulman entered a successful motion to remove $517,000 from the capital budget, which lowered the proposed increase by 0.33 per cent.
Where the $517,000 is deducted from in the capital budget will be up to administration, but will most likely come from capital projects with lower-ranking priority.
Councillor Melissa Harrigan also put forward two successful motions that helped lower the tax increase amount.
Harrigan requested that $250,000 from year two of the $550,000 funding for underground infrastructure be deferred to years three and four.
Harrigan was behind the original motion during the 2019 deliberations to invest an extra $550,000 over the next four years into the storm sewer lifecycle. However, she said she recognized this year's budget was one with tough decisions to make.
"Ultimately for me, it came down to a little bit of preservation," she explained. "I know myself, and my colleagues, are looking for items that can be removed from the budget and I didn't want storm sewers to be removed entirely. So I thought a little bit of a compromise this year only committing half of what we would typically commit in a year to storm sewers allows us to make up those dollars in future years and still continue to invest in something that's important."
As a result of Harrigan's motion, funding towards storm sewer lifecycle will be increased to $675,000 in the 2021 and 2022 budget, pending deliberations during those years.
Towards the end of the evening, Harrigan put forward another successful motion to remove $419,906 from the budget that was allocated to Child Care and Early Years services expansion funding, which the municipality is on the hook for due to funding cuts at the provincial level.
Harrigan said the decision involving child care was a difficult one to make but argued that the taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for almost $420,000 in provincial downloads.
"We had a cost-sharing agreement. Initially, there was $2.4 million given to us [by the provincial government] annually, give or take, for expanding child care spaces and giving a subsidy amount to all parents who have children in licenced childcare," explained Harrigan, adding that the province will now only be providing 80 per cent of that funding. "For me, it was something we can cut because it doesn't directly impact the people who need it most. We can have that 20 per cent cut and then focus our attention towards people in lower-income categories who really need that subsidy rather than universally applying it."
Dr. April Rietdyk, general manager of Community Human Services, said that the reduction to Child Care and Early Years is manageable in the short term and would not impact the most vulnerable residents in Chatham-Kent.
"Parents who meet the cut off in terms of receiving child care subsidy continue to receive that," Rietdyk said. "This funding has nothing to do with that. This funding has nothing to do with our early on [program], it has nothing to do with administration of the programs, nothing to do with our indigenous [programs]. This is truly childcare expansion. It impacts everyone kind of across the board. It's not going to impact the most vulnerable."
Also during Wednesday's budget deliberations, council approved a 1.75 per cent increase to the Chatham-Kent Police Service 2020 budget, which has a total tax impact of 0.35 per cent.
Cheif Gary Conn presented a $31.8 million budget for 2020, which is up $547,135 from 2019. According to Conn, the increase was largely due to contract settlements and raises. Conn added that the 2020 police budget includes no additional staff and no cuts to services and called it a "fiscally responsible" budget.
Budget deliberations resume on Thursday night at 6 p.m. at the Civic Centre in Chatham.