{"id":26483,"date":"2020-05-07T17:59:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T21:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26483"},"modified":"2020-05-14T18:31:14","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T22:31:14","slug":"covid-19-will-have-a-significant-impact-on-2021-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/covid-19-will-have-a-significant-impact-on-2021-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 will have a \u201csignificant impact\u201d on 2021 Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Losses of revenue on multiple fronts will have a\n\u201csignificant impact\u201d on Aurora\u2019s budgets in 2021 and 2022, Council learned last\nweek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should emergency measures put in place in response to the\nglobal COVID-19 pandemic be in place until the end of the year, the Town will\nsee a loss of more than $2.1 million in revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 28, Rachel Wainwright-Van Kessel, Treasurer for\nthe Town of Aurora, presented a month-by-month impact of the financial fallout\nrelated to COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of the end of April, the Town is facing a loss of\napproximately $329,000. There is a bit of give and take, however, as the loss\nin recreational revenues resulting from cancelled events and facility rentals\nis expected to be offset through operational savings as most Town buildings are\nall but shuttered with minimal maintenance staff on site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Lost Development Revenue and Lost Tax Penalties] are\ndriving the greatest impact to the estimated deficits,\u201d said Ms. Wainwright-Van\nKessel. \u201cLost development revenue\u2026comes from development applications ranging\nfrom subdivision and site plans to Committee of Adjustment requests. As\nrestrictions are lifted\u2026and the economy begins to re-open, the revenue for this\nitem may start to rebound, but it may also take some time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penalties collected on taxes are also on the wain. If\nfees on past-due accounts are waived until the end of the year, the Town will\nsee a loss of just over $1 million, she noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, penalties on taxes have been waived until June\n30 following orders issued near the start of the pandemic. A further report\nwill be coming to Council later this month on related actions that will shape\nthe rest of 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould the Town have an overall deficit relating to\nCOVID-19 and combined with any potential savings we could have through\noperations, it would be funded through the tax stabilization reserve [which]\ncurrently has roughly a $7 million balance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revenues will also likely be lost when it comes to water,\nwastewater and stormwater bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to the pandemic, the Region of York postponed\nthe nine per cent cost increase they planned on the bulk purchase of water.\nShould the Town decide to forego any rate increases, Ms. Wainwright-Van Kessel\nsaid the Town would see a net loss of $914,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince the rate-funded budget does not have a separate\nstabilization reserve, the deficit will result in a lower contribution to asset\nmanagement for these services,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, Aurora has collected 77 per cent of taxes due\nApril 21 due to tax deferral options previously announced by the Town. 155 of\nresidential pre-authorized payments have been deferred, while 53 commercial\nproperty owners took the Town up on its offer for a tax referral, proving to\nthe municipality in the process that they were passing along the benefits of\nthe tax deferral to their tenants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Treasurer confirmed that COVID-19 would indeed\nimpact the 2021 and 2022 Operating Budgets, the portion of the budget with the\nmost direct impact on tax bills, Council began its sweep of the financial\nforecast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawmakers particularly focused on the retail rates for\nwater, wastewater and storm water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council unanimously voted to revert the rates for three\nitems to a break-even rate until the end of June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wish I had a little more time on this to understand it\nbetter,\u201d said Councillor John Gallo on the report, adding he would have\npreferred the financial forecast to come to a General Committee meeting to\nallow Council an extra week to ask questions and seek answers before making a\nfinal decision on rates. \u201cTo come straight to Council, it is pretty big\ndecisions in the impact or potential impact and help not only to the residents\nbut also to the businesses. I just really don\u2019t have enough information to make\na decision on whether I would want to move to remain at the 2019 rates and have\na further discussion on how to mitigate that, because this is going to be a\nmulti-pronged effort in terms of figuring out our finances, not only figuring\nout where our losses are going to be, how we can help the residents in various\nareas, but also looking internally and figuring out how or what are we going to\ndo in order to mitigate all of these factors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harkening back to a question asked by Councillor Rachel\nGilliland earlier in the meeting, he said he wanted more information on how the\nTown was looking \u201cinternally\u201d to mitigate these impacts and hoped it would be\npart of the further report due in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Councillor Michael Thompson: \u201cIt is tough seeing\nthe numbers and I think we\u2019re all concerned with trying to figure out ways to\ndevelop some mitigation strategy or blunt the impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was also the view offered by Councillor Harold Kim,\nwho said he did not anticipate coming out of COVID-19 in a standard manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think this is necessarily going to be a V-shaped recovery and not all the jobs are coming back,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is going to be a new normal. There is going to be a challenge not just for 2020, but also 2021. Anything we hold back on with regards to water, wastewater and late penalties is going to be exacerbated in 2021. I wouldn\u2019t want to make a decision at this point to waive or to maintain the 2019 fees for all of 2020, but let\u2019s play it incrementally and see where this next piece of information goes because, in the end, we don\u2019t have the deep pockets that other levels of government have. We\u2019re no different from Smart Centres or any other landlord because we only have one source of revenue. If you hold off this year and you look at the anticipated increase in 2021, it is going to be a huge increase that people are still going to have to live with. We can\u2019t keep deferring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Losses of revenue on multiple fronts will have a \u201csignificant impact\u201d on Aurora\u2019s budgets in 2021 and 2022, Council learned last week. Should emergency measures put in place in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic be in place until the end of the year, the Town will see a loss of more than $2.1 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6T9","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:40:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}