Thunder Bay city council ratifies 2024 municipal budget

Thunder Bay city council has ratified the 2024 municipal budget, approving a tax levy increase of 5.47 per cent after growth.

"It's a little bit higher than what probably everybody wanted, but everybody knows what's happening out there with pricing," city Mayor Ken Boshcoff said. "So that's what council is also faced with."

The tax levy is the amount the city needs from taxpayers to fund city services and capital infrastructure programs. For 2024, the city determined that a levy of about $231 million was required.

The remainder of the city's total budget of about $537 million comes from other sources, such as user fees.

Council did make some last-minute changes that dropped the tax levy slightly (prior to Monday's meeting, the levy was sitting at 5.48 per cent after growth).

Those included approving higher rates for city golf courses for the upcoming season.

The new user fees for season passes, usable at Chapples and Strathcona golf courses, are just over $1,500 for adults aged 36 to 59, an increase of 3.03 per cent over last year.

Adults aged 23-25 will now pay just over $1,300 for a season pass, an increase of 1.72 per cent.

Finally, day fees for nine holes at both city courses will rise 5.26 per cent to $35.40, while a round of 18 holes will now cost $45.14, up 4.10 per cent over last year.

A report to council states the new fees will increase annual revenues by $30,000.

Westfort Coun. Kristen Oliver said the annual budget process is a gruelling one, "and rightly so."

"We should be looking at every opportunity we can to find the efficiencies," she said. "At the end of the day, 5.47 [per cent] is where we've landed. When you look at what other municipalities have done, where they landed, I think we're doing pretty well."

"Also considering the fact that there's huge capital investments in this budget, such as our new garbage trucks that we will be purchasing as we move forward with the automated garbage trucks, and of course the hefty increase to the police budget, those are things that we hear at the municipal level that are certainly important to people."

The Thunder Bay Police Service's 2024 operating budget is about $54 million (the police budget is approved by the city's Police Service Board, not city council).

And while Oliver said councillors expected 2024 to be a "hefty year" in terms of the municipal budget, she's hopeful things will be a bit easier in upcoming years.

"People don't like us to compare ourselves to other municipalities, but the reality is we have global inflation that's impacting budgets," she said. "We still have supply chain issues that are impacting the budget, and when you're paying inflationary cost at home, we're also doing that at the municipal level as well."

"In a perfect world, we would like to come in around four per cent, and I think moving forward that's likely where we'll be, if not lower," Oliver said. "I think what we're doing well with this budget, too, is we are starting to set ourselves up to likely see some investment, and if we can build that industrial tax base then that, of course, will relieve the pressure on the residential tax side."

Exactly what impact the 2024 levy increase will have on Thunder Bay property owners is still to be determined, city treasurer Keri Greaves said.

"That work still has to be done," he said after Monday's meeting. "There is going to be a tax policy report that comes out in March."

"That report will actually determine the impact on the average homeowner."