Chatham-Kent 2021 Budget Community Meetings (Photo via the Municipality of Chatham-Kent Facebook)Chatham-Kent 2021 Budget Community Meetings (Photo via the Municipality of Chatham-Kent Facebook)
Chatham

Infrastructure a key topic during community budget meeting

Chatham-Kent residents continue to make their voices heard during this year's budget process.

The second budget community consultation meeting was held on Wednesday afternoon through the Municipality of Chatham-Kent's Facebook page.

Residents got another chance to interact with municipal officials and sound off on the municipality's draft budget for 2021, which proposes a tax increase of 3.96 per cent.

During the first meeting, held on Tuesday, several of the questions revolved around how the municipality plans to help the most vulnerable groups in Chatham-Kent and how the municipality will protect residents who are feeling the financial impacts of the pandemic.

Wednesday's meeting brought on a wide variety of topics from residents that covered everything from roads and transit to broader questions about the tax increase and what could be done to lower it.

It was made clear during the meetings that residents want as much information as possible when it comes to tax dollars and what they are being spent on. The municipal officials that were on hand fielded a few questions that revolved around how people can get a full breakdown or a more in-depth look into the budget.

According to Chief Administrative Officer Don Shropshire, the fully detailed budget is around 650 pages, which poses challenges when it comes to sharing it with residents.

"It's extraordinarily difficult and expensive to actually post that on our website in an accessible format, which we're required to do by the province, it's the law. If you'd like a copy of that complete 650-page budget, we're happy to provide an electronic version of that, [if you email or call the municipality] we'll make sure that we send you a disk," explained Shropshire. "That's available to any of our citizens."

Shropshire also recommends that individuals visit the page on the municipality's website that's dedicated to the budget. On it, residents can find the budget binder which features an extensive, yet more summarized version of the budget and what's being proposed this year.

"It not only provides an update on what each director is looking to spend on their proposed budget, but it also includes budgets as far back as 2015," he said.

With 2.10 per cent of the proposed budget allocated towards investing in infrastructure, it was another popular topic among residents on Wednesday.

According to Chief Financial Officer Gord Quinton, 2021 is a relatively low rate for inflation on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). However, he said the inflation on infrastructure continues to rise.

"We just get further and further behind if we don't maintain that...Part of the problem for property taxes across Canada and Ontario is that all the local roads and infrastructure, it's all on local property taxpayers to pay," Quinton said. "We do get a little bit of federal gas tax but in the grand scheme of things, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what our costs are."

General Manager of Infrastructure and Engineering Services Thomas Kelly added that the municipality receives frequent complaints about the condition and quality of roads in Chatham-Kent and one of the biggest hurdles for the municipality is a lack of funding for paved roads.

"Our gravel roads are really, very close to being fully funded, it's in the 92 per cent range of what we should have...When it comes down to paved roads, we're only at 52 per cent," Kelly explained. "That means that if there are 10 roads that need to be resurfaced, we can only do five."

According to Kelly, administration has included a one per cent increase in overall infrastructure in the 2021 budget.

"That's the $5billion in assets that we have. We spread that out over the entire infrastructure spend. Our total infrastructure spend is very close to $60 million and we're asking council to take one per cent of that...and we're looking to try to get to a point, especially with our paved roads, where we'd be much closer to being fully funded," explained Kelly.

There were also several concerns about the general increase in costs including a question from a resident that asked how low-income households or those with fixed incomes can continue to afford to live in Chatham-Kent.

While acknowledging the difficulties a tax increase may have on those individuals, Shropshire explained that one of the goals of the budget is to invest in growing the municipality and its economy to help draw more people to the region.

"The honest answer is, we continue to see costs going up," he said. "The municipal staff works with council every year to try and find ways to drive out efficiencies... At the end of the day, council does not want to raise taxes more than they absolutely have to nor do they want to try and reduce service levels, people want a quality of life and they want quality services. The best solution the council chooses to support is to try and find a way to grow the municipality. If we can draw more people to Chatham-Kent... then there's more people to share the costs and the overall cost burden will go down."

The third and final community meeting will be held on Thursday from 6 p.m. until 7 p.m. Anyone unable to attend can send a question or opinion in advance by emailing ckfps@chatham-kent.ca. Recordings of the meetings can also be viewed on the municipality’s Facebook page.

Budget deliberations kick off on January 27 at 6 p.m. Written deputations of up to five minutes in length are welcomed every night of budget deliberations. Submissions must be made by 3 p.m. each evening by email, telephone or mail.

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