{"id":27909,"date":"2020-11-06T11:41:42","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T16:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=27909"},"modified":"2020-11-06T11:41:48","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T16:41:48","slug":"covid-19-tops-council-concerns-on-first-sweep-of-2021-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/covid-19-tops-council-concerns-on-first-sweep-of-2021-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 tops Council concerns on first sweep of 2021 Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Planning ahead for whatever COVID-19 might bring in the next year or two was top of mind for local lawmakers as they took their first preliminary sweep at the 2021 Budget last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Town Treasurer Rachel Wainwright-van Kessel presented an overview of what to expect at Tuesday\u2019s Council meeting ahead of the start of budget deliberations on November 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, she said her department anticipated COVID-19 pressures will continue into 2021, but not 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, however, raised concerns from Councillor Rachel Gilliland who questioned why there wasn\u2019t a longer-range outlook when it comes to mitigating the impacts of the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am just wondering why we chose not to at least prepare for whether or not we could still be facing pressures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Treasurer said it was still \u201cvery early\u201d to determine the challenges that might come beyond 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is very early to try and figure out what some of those pressures could be and we haven\u2019t had the opportunity to even look at the potential funding that could come from higher levels of government for 2021 and 2022 at that point in time,\u201d said Ms. Wainwright-van Kessel. \u201cI think as we get further into 2021, as we get through the 2022 Budget, that is going to be an opportunity to start [making] some of those potential adjustments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of the [challenges] are for the first part of the year. The hope is we do start to see a vaccine or more of a return to normal in the first part of next year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Councillor was hopeful that would indeed be the case, but wanted further assurances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile I do like to believe we will have a vaccine in 2022 and hopefully we\u2019re all back to normal, I would just hope that any kind of numbers projecting for 2022, we don\u2019t just assume it is all back to normal because I would certainly want to know what position we would be in if it wasn\u2019t and what that would mean, and we should prepare for that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a view shared by Councillor Wendy Gaertner, who added: \u201cWe don\u2019t know what is coming forward and I guess it would be your guess at this point, but I would like to have some sort of placeholder in case we do need to be paying more attention to COVID in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVID-19 could also have an impact on the operations of Aurora\u2019s Business Improvement Area (BIA), which encompasses the immediate portion of the Yonge and Wellington corridor. Businesses and property owners pay an additional tax levy to the Town which goes directly to the BIA for its ongoing programs to revitalize the Downtown Core. Although these tax levies only apply to the properties within the BIA rather than the Town\u2019s overall tax base, there is still uncertainty on how much will be required for ongoing programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey won\u2019t know what their year-end is until sometime into March, so they don\u2019t plan on setting their rate until March,\u201d said CAO Doug Nadorozny. \u201cWe also want to wait and see for what their full year end brings to where they are with COVID and whether or not they are even going to ask for a levy. Council will recall that last year they didn\u2019t assess a BIA levy to reflect the hardship businesses were going through as a result of COVID, so they are reserving their decision until later in the year. There is really nothing for them to formally present and they don\u2019t know what they are going to do for 2021 until they get into the New Year and see how COVID is impacting them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going forward, additional focus will be placed on how the Town finances its reserves. This will be done by assessing how much is needed based on what is anticipated for the future versus what previous years have shown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen it comes to some of the tax-funded reserves, there are some that are more well-funded than others,\u201d said Ms. Wainwright-van Kessel. \u201cThere are some that do have a shortage of funding. [The strategy] is going to account for some of those changes. As we come into next year, we\u2019re going to take a really good look at what our fiscal strategy requirements are based on the future needs basis because, right now, what is happening is we\u2019re applying our contribution to reserves from the tax levy based on the historical requirements. By doing it based on the future needs analysis, we\u2019ll have a better understanding of what those contributions over the long term need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the tabling of the Budget last week, Mayor Tom Mrakas said in a statement that he and Council were well aware of the difficulties 2020 has placed on residents so far and this is reflected in the numbers presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to thank staff for the work that has gone into the development of this budget,\u201d he said. \u201cCouncil and I are very aware of how important it is for us to be fiscally responsible while at the same time ensuring that residents continue to be able to benefit from the quality of life we strive for in Aurora. This has been a very difficult year for everyone in the community. It is our responsibility as elected officials to make sure we are acting responsibly with the tax dollars in our care, and with the best interests of citizens in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Planning ahead for whatever COVID-19 might bring in the next year or two was top of mind for local lawmakers as they took their first preliminary sweep at the 2021 Budget last week. Town Treasurer Rachel Wainwright-van Kessel presented an overview of what to expect at Tuesday\u2019s Council meeting ahead of the start of budget […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27909","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\/p3D2k4-7g9","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 02:35:26","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\/27909","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=27909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}