The 2025 Proposed Budget (Budget) was prepared by mayor Jan Liggett working with City management. It was developed using “strong mayor powers”, granted to mayors by the Province of Ontario.
The budget has Cambridge municipal employment growing significantly in 2025. The number of City workers will have grown by ~7.2% from 2024 through 2025. That’s more than 3 times the expected percentage population growth in Cambridge for the same period. This does not seem reasonable. While property taxpayers are having to tighten their budgets, the City appears to be doing the exact opposite..
Municipal SWB’s are the largest single driver behind ballooning property taxes. City municipal wages are budgeted to grow on average by 1.75 times (3.5%) the 2025 inflation rate (2%) predicted by the Bank of Canada. In 2024 City wages grew on average by 3.2 times (north of 8%) the average 2.5% inflation rate. The PTA believes these SWB increases represent a misuse of our hard-earned property tax dollars. They are far in excess of the increases property taxpayers are receiving.
The City chose to publish the Engage Cambridge survey results again in the 2025 budget document. These results are not valid and can be very misleading. They tell the City nothing about what Cambridge residents/property taxpayers want and should not be published in the released version of the 2025 budget. Only statistically valid data like that of the Deloitte survey should be used in the budget.
A new twist in the 2025 budget is that the storm water cost increase has been separated out from the property tax increase. The total per household property tax increase would have been 4.68%, which includes the 1% infrastructure levy. But 3.42%, the storm water cost, which has historically been part of the City’s property tax increase and operating budget, has been removed and shifted to the Water Bill. This drops the 2025 property tax levy to a seemingly low 1.26%. However, what’s not disclosed is that City reserves were drawn down to artificially lower the increase to 1.26%. We do not know how high it would have been otherwise. In the big picture, the cost increase per average Cambridge household is proposed to be 4.68% in 2025 (1.26% tax levy and 3.42% water bill increase). And this increase 2.34 times the Bank of Canada’s predicted 2% inflation rate for 2025.
Will your income increase by 4.68% next year? Mine sure wont. Once again, our disposable incomes are being eroded away .. year after year by excessive municipal property taxation and cost increases.
Cambridge residents please talk to your ward councillors. If they refuse to take budget action to get our annual property tax increases back down in line with inflation (which is what the Deloitte survey results tell them we want), then it is time to vote for change.
Leave a Reply