In the face of proposed service cuts and more than $1 billion in postponed projects, Mayor Cam Guthrie is calling on the provincial and federal governments to pony up on promised funding.
His comments came Tuesday morning, while presenting the draft 2025 city budget update to members of the Guelph Chamber of Commerce during an event dubbed the ‘Budget Breakfast.’
At various points in his remarks, Guthrie spoke about two pockets of upper-tier funding that, though announced, have yet to flow to municipalities – a provincial pledge to make cities “whole” in the wake of development charge cutbacks and housing-related funding announced by the federal government in April.
“I’m personally disappointed in the fact that this was announced in April … and we still don’t have an answer about what type of money is coming, the criteria (for spending it), who it’s going to,” Guthrie said of federal housing money. “Winter is coming.”
Those funds, announced as $250 million Canada-wide, are to be used to address homelessness and encampments.
Guthrie anticipates the funds, if and when it reaches municipalities, will go toward operating costs similar to how $630,000 in one-time federal funding to the County of Wellington was used last winter – putting unhoused residents up in hotels, rent subsidy programs and more.
Ideally, he said, he’d like to see some of the new money put toward capital projects that would enhance affordable housing.
In terms of provincial dollars, Guthrie said the province has yet to fulfill its promise from last fall to make municipalities financially whole following a series of legislative changes that lessened the development charges they’re allowed to collect.
“That still has not happened,” he said, acknowledging some of the removed fees have been restored and some infrastructure grants have been received for projects that would have previously been funded through development charges, but a gap remains..
“There’s some accountability there on the part of the province to still fulfill that promise.”
As it stands, the draft 2025 city budget comes with a residential property tax increase of 2.59 per cent, which means the average median property in Guelph, valued at $408,000, will pay $123.28 more than it did in 2024.
A small office building with a single tenant or owner-occupied (under 7,500 sq. ft.) will see a $34.22 jump, while a small retail commercial building with less than 10,000 sq. ft. of retail space will pay an added $28.03, the presentation noted.
For the “standard” industrial property, the draft increase equates to $112.99 in new tax dollars.
Though that doesn’t include everything, only the city-controlled portion of the budget which accounts for about two-thirds of the spending plan.
The boards and committees budgets will be presented to council in January. Though council has no say over individual line items in those budgets, it does set the overall amounts those groups – police, public health, library and others – receive.
