Essex County residents to pay 4.95 per cent more in taxes

Essex County residents will be facing a tax increase of 4.95 per cent this year.

The county passed its 2024 budget Wednesday evening, with the net operating requirement for the county finalized at $132,282,190 — which is roughly $8.6 million more than last year's budget.

The tax increase translates into $25.55 for every $100,000 a property is assessed.

In the penultimate motion of budget deliberations on Wednesday evening, which began in a dedicated meeting a week earlier, Essex County Council decided by a 9-5 vote to withdraw $403,000 from its Rate Stabilization Reserve to help avoid a larger tax increase.

This was the recommendation put forward by the county's administration in response to a motion from council to try and reduce the increase from 5.27 per cent — which is where talks ended last week — to 4.95 per cent.

"When looking at options to provide to council…to find $403,000 worth of savings, administration did weigh the risk of cutting operating and capital expenses," said Sandra Zwiers, the county's chief administrative officer.

"Given the persistent pressures on inflation, the demands for our service, the desire to maintain existing levels of service and maintain quality of service, administration does not recommend cuts to operating and/or capital (expenses) to achieve a 4.95 per cent tax rate increase."

In the end, there were no cuts to expenses — despite some council members suggesting that when talks began.

Those councillors argued that instead of pulling money from the reserve, alternative places in the budget could be found to make cuts and drop the tax increase.

"I don't like the rate stabilization method because we did that last year," said Kirk Walstedt, deputy mayor of Lakeshore.

"It was a stopgap measure for last year and here we're looking at doing it again. It always comes back to bite you in the future: How do we put that (amount) back in the future?"

Lakeshore Mayor Tracey Bailey, meanwhile, submitted a motion to pull $1.2 million from the reserve to drop the tax rate even further to 4.32 per cent.

Many council members were not in favour of that, including Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy.

"I got my head wrapped around the $403,000, but the $1.2 million; I think that is a lot," Bondy said.