Dryden Council is reacting to a 3.91% tax increase and the contents contained in the approved municipal budget.
Shayne MacKinnon abstained from the vote, calling it the “Police Transition Budget of 2022”.
“The police budget for last year was $3.9 million. The police budget for this year, and that is including all the transition costs, is $8.2 million. That’s an increase of 47%,” says MacKinnon.
MacKinnon adds, “To pay for that we are going to use Legacy money, which is in fact renamed from the Hydro proceeds that we had a number of years ago. We are also going to use the Emergency Reserve. As a matter of fact we are going to exhaust our Emergency Reserve.”
He says out of the roughly $400,000 in that reserve, the City is now left with only $18,000.
MacKinnon says badly needed work took a hit as a result of the policing costs.
“Chopping over 30 items off of our capital budget. Items such as alleyway repairs downtown, road repairs, dock repairs, snowplows, park upgrades, dog park fencing, trails,” MacKinnon stated.
Norm Bush disagreed with his comments stressing City staff did a great job in drafting the fiscal document during difficult times.
“The Canadian inflation rate for 2021 and it looks like it’s going to be higher for 2022 is 4.8%. The increase that we have in this budget is 3.91%. Ontario’s inflation rate for 2021 was 5.2%,” says Bush.
In terms of policing costs, Bush says the Dryden Police Service had the highest police costs in all of the province and this year would have made things worse.
Bush says, “18% (increase). So if we stayed with DPS. That’s $708,000. Would have required a 5% increase to pay for that one year increase in DPS, which by the way get’s perpetuated on an on-going basis.”
He adds, “This budget, with 3.9%, covers off policing costs which were going to increase anyway. Gives us more police officers. Credit to City staff for keeping this budget, with all of those increased costs, below the rate of inflation for Canada and the province.”
All on Council voted in favour of the 2022 municipal budget with the exception of Shayne MacKinnon.
