From Matt Wren, Mayor of Brockville: Proposed 2024 City Budget tabled

Brockville – City of Brockville Mayor Matt Wren posted on his Facebook today that the proposed City of Brockville 2024 Budget has been tabled after Tuesday night’s council meeting.

“Proposed 2024 City Budget tabled Equates to a 4.9% increase to your tax bill.

At last night’s Council meeting, staff presented the 2024 Budget package that has resulted from the last several weeks of presentations, discussions and adjustments.

There is a proposed 6.65% increase to the tax levy, which combines the increase for the operation of our internal City of Brockville departments of approximately 3.4% with the budgets of the various boards and organizations the city is mandated to fund, and several discretionary expenditures where increases amount to an average of 9.93%. Generally, Council has very little authority over the budgets of these community partners.

Because the City has grown and there are more tax-paying properties than in 2023, the actual tax rate increase reduces to 5.4%.

As your property tax bill also includes education taxes which have been frozen, the ultimate impact on your bill, if the Council approves the budget as presented, would be 4.9%.

The council chose to defer final approval until our meeting on February 27 and any input that residents have is welcome and encouraged prior to final approval. Feel free to email my office: themayor@brockville.com with any comments you may have.

Yet again this year, this has been a very challenging budget. For the second year in a row, we have been impacted by a million-dollar increase, this year for our supplemental long-term care funding for St. Lawrence Lodge.

While there is negligible new spending, all service levels are to be maintained. $10 million in capital projects will be carried out including repaving roads and refurbishing the William Street overpass among many other projects. Two new seasonal workers will focus on cleaning up our city by eliminating unsightly curb weeds and cleaning up graffiti and vandalism among other maintenance, and they will also provide oversight of the Rotary outdoor rink facility keeping users safe, and protecting against vandalism which has been an ongoing issue.

Changes Council made through decisions in 2023 to provide a city-operated Para Transit service, operate Tourism through a Municipal Service Corporation and establish a Forestry department have provided a net savings in cost that positively affects this year’s budget.

I want to thank all City staff and departments, our City Manager and Director of Finance, as well as the boards, committees and staff of all community partners for their hard work during this annual process. We look forward to concluding the annual budget process on February 27.

All reports can be found at www.brockville.com/budget“

Matt Wren – Mayor of Brockville