There will be no “shock and awe (budget) moment” for city council this year, believes Mayor Cam Guthrie.
Rather than surprise his council colleagues with mayoral orders setting a city budget increase target as he did for 2025, the mayor wants to bring them along as the spending plan is updated.
That’s why, earlier this month, he started the ball rolling on council discussions meant to help shape what the 2026 and 2027 budget updates will look like, including setting project and service level priorities, and determining an “affordability target” for property tax increases.
“Surprising my council colleagues in the manner in which I did in February at my State of the City address was not the way in which to bring my colleagues along,” he told GuelphToday during a year-end interview.
“Using the strong mayor powers to tackle that affordability issue was not really the problem. The problem was the manner in which I publicly addressed tackling that issue.”
During his 2024 State of the City address, Guthrie announced plans to start using some strong mayor powers granted to his role by the provincial government the summer before. He’d previously stated he didn’t “want” to use those powers and several members of council expressed concern when he did.
One of his first mayoral orders was for staff to prepare a draft 2025 budget update with no more than a four per cent property tax increase for the city-controlled portion of the budget – excluding boards and committees such as police, library and public health.
At the time, the overall 2025 property tax increase was set at 9.79 per cent; that’s since been brought down to an anticipated 6.1 per cent. Finalization of the budget is expected in January.
In his latest budget order, Guthrie directed staff to facilitate city council discussions on 2026 and 2027 city budgets in the coming months. The stated goal is to provide advice to the mayor prior to the development of those budget updates.
“I want to hear first out of the gate from my (council) colleagues, with my staff. There's no reason for a shock and awe moment,” Guthrie said, referring to his State of the City announcement last year.
“We could collectively do that together, and I can listen to that feedback as the mayoral direction says, first.”
Under the same legislation that granted strong mayor powers, the process for setting municipal budgets was changed. No longer must council approve the spending plan, it’s deemed complete when introduced by the mayor and is officially known as the “mayor’s budget.”
However, council has an opportunity to approve amendments to it. Followed by potential mayoral vetoes and council’s change to overturn any vetoes with a two-thirds majority (in the case of Guelph, that’s nine of 13 council votes).
Late last month, the city controlled portion of the 2025 budget was formalized with a 3.66 per cent property tax increase. Based on preliminary outside board and committee budgets, an overall 6.08 per cent increase is anticipated.
Since then, the Guelph Police Service Board has added $250,000 to its ask.
The seven outside boards and committees are set to deliver their budgets to city council on Jan. 22. Though council doesn’t have the ability to adjust individual aspects of those budgets, it has authority over the overall totals.
