Sudbury city council tables draft budget with 3.7% proposed tax hike for residents
According to city's plan, rate would increase annually by $122 for the average household
The City of Greater Sudbury tabled its draft 2023 budget on Tuesday night, which includes a proposed 3.7 per cent tax increase for residents.
According to the city's plan, that would translate to an annual increase of about $122 for the average household assessed at $230,000 in Sudbury, or roughly $10 a month.
To compare, city council approved an increase of 3.1 per cent in 2022.
Council asked staff to limit the tax increase to 3.7 per cent, though throughout deliberations they are able to find savings, or add expenses, which may change the tax increase amount.
The proposed capital budget of $155 million includes more than $50 million earmarked for road construction and repairs to the city's transportation and winter road maintenance of nearly $24 million, up from $22 million, which was set aside for 2022. The operating budget totals approximately $700 million.
Police budget
Greater Sudbury Police Services Chief Paul Pedersen presented the service's proposed 2023 budget, which if approved by council, would increase by 5.6 per cent.
Should council vote to pass the police budget, as presented, the service's 2023 budget would total about $73 million.
A key part of the proposed budget is $327,800 to hire 15 cadets in 2023. Ten of the cadets would start in June, and five would start in September.
By 2025, the police service plans to have 24 new hires. Of those new hires, 18 officers would be out on patrol, four would be added to a new homicide unit and two would be part of the drug enforcement unit.
That's as community members and organizations like Black Lives Matter Sudbury renew their concern over an increase to the police budget.
In 2021, Black Lives Matter Sudbury called for the city to defund the GSPS by 10 per cent, which would have amounted to more than $6 million. In 2021, Sudbury police proposed an increased budget of 4.8 per cent.
Ward One councillor Mark Signoretti brought up the calls perviously made to defund police and asked Pederson how he intends to address those calls.
"It's not lost on us that policing is expensive. The reality is that everything that I've shown you on those slides, everything from homicide investigations to responding to violence in our community, to theft, sir, are quite frankly the only business of police and we're the only ones mandated to be able to do that," Pederson said in response.
"Our staffing levels right now have us just barely able to meet the collective agreement staffing levels ... if we're not able to invest in more proactive, preventative, upstream work we're not going to be able to do the expectations of our community," he said.
Public Health Sudbury & Districts also presented its draft budget, which if passed by council would rise by 3.17 per cent. Meanwhile the Greater Sudbury Public Library put forward a budget that would see an increase of 6.7per cent for 2023. Council's budget direction to the library was to remain within 3.4 per cent.
"Our overall costs are up and ... we're not anticipating increases in funding from the provincial government, which is our second greatest funder," said Brian Harding, chief executive officer and chief librarian of the public library.
"We haven't seen increases in the public library operating grant for several decades," he added.
Budget deliberations will begin Feb. 15, spanning to March 2, with additional meetings to be scheduled if needed. Council is expected to approve the final budget on March 7.
The city is also planning two virtual town halls to present the budget to the public.