Grey County 2024 Budget Response
Blue Mountain Ratepayers’ Association
January 2024
We watched with great interest, and some consternation, as Grey County Council deliberated the 2024 County budget. In our era of rapidly increasing costs in all facets of our lives, the prospect of a double digit County levy increase was extremely problematic. Even the fact that such a jump was initially proposed seemed disrespectful to County residents, and demonstrated limited awareness or concern for the affordability challenges that are being faced across the country. Even with the final increase being cut back to 6.3%, that level seems excessive. The fact that a significant proportion of the spending reductions were sourced through lowered contributions to reserves, or withdrawals from current reserves, was not ideal. That would simply seem to be kicking the budget challenges down the road before the issues are ultimately addressed.
We were however heartened that County Councillors pushed back on the initial draft tax levy increase. Some quotes from press coverage of the Council sessions included;
"Costs of everything are up and council realizes everyone is feeling more pressure in their day-to-day expenses"
" I believe it’s still too high in this economy and with the pressures at the local level. There is only one taxpayer and one taxpayer’s wallet"
“It’s as high as I’ve ever seen it. It basically means we don’t have the flexibility at the lower tiers as we’ve had in the past. The dynamics are going to change. We have to roll up our sleeves.”
We believe the broader message was captured by Grey Highlands Mayor Paul MacQueen when he stated;
“It boils down to: maybe the county can’t do it all anymore”.
That seems to be the crux of the matter. We have long been told that the Province mandates what services the County must deliver, which greatly limits the County's ability to make substantive changes to operations and spending.
That is a position that we must challenge.
The Province may direct what services Grey County provides, but it clearly does not spell out how those services are delivered. We believe that a very hard look must be taken at the County's operating and staffing model. Are there opportunities for more efficient operations that have not been identified or pursued? Are there not redundancies between County and Municipalities, or across Municipalities themselves, that need to be explored? During budget deliberations at the Town of Blue Mountains, the idea of looking for shared, and more cost effective approaches to delivering programs by collaborating with other municipalities was raised a few times. Is taking the lead in that area not where we would expect the County to provide value to member municipalities? Should we not do all we can to avoid bidding against one another in chasing limited external resources? We no longer have the luxury of accepting the suggestion that "that's just the way things are done around here".
An opportunity seems to be presenting itself to make substantive progress on budget efficiency through the implementation of a County Finance Committee. The statement in the press to introduce the concept of the committee included the following;
"The County plans to move forward with a multi-year operational budget plan, this will help the county make long-term plans on how to provide the services our residents have come to expect”.
That suggests the potential for making much needed enhancements to the County's operations and spending controls. To fully deliver, we believe there are some critical success factors that should be incorporated.
some form of a zero based budgeting approach, so that the evaluation of new and better ways to deliver services are not overlooked or ignored.
operating with transparency and accountability should be the tenets of the initiative. Updates shared with County constituents when appropriate would be greatly appreciated.
no sacred cows – if there are current assumptions about County services that residents have come to expect, we would ask - based on what information are those assumptions based, and is this true across all Grey Municipalities? Could it be time to discontinue this service, or download it to a lower tier which needs it?
The Blue Mountain Ratepayers’ Association also requests a “Sources and Uses” report that would detail County funding, including tax levies, development charges (where they are received from and allocated to) and government grants, and capital expenditures including projected costs, project priorities and financing plans with related accruals. We don’t currently have clarity in this area, which is a point that we stressed in our presentation January 11th to the Provincial Budget Consultation panel.
For your consideration.
Jim Torrance
President, BMRA
