{"id":9912,"date":"2015-02-26T11:20:48","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T16:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9912"},"modified":"2015-03-11T18:06:29","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T22:06:29","slug":"fire-on-councils-minds-as-tax-hike-currently-stands-at-5-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/fire-on-councils-minds-as-tax-hike-currently-stands-at-5-66\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire on Council\u2019s minds as tax hike currently stands at 5.66%"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aurora\u2019s proposed residential tax increase now stands at 5.66 per cent, following the beginning of discussions on the Town\u2019s operating budget.<\/p>\n

Council kicked off deliberations of the 2015 Operating Budget, the portion of the municipal budget that has the largest impact on tax rates, on Monday morning. Going into Monday\u2019s meeting, Council was facing a 6.1 per cent tax hike as a larger-than-anticipated budget request from the Central York Fire Services (CYFS) \u2013 the fire department serving Aurora and Newmarket \u2013 pushed things well beyond the initial tax increase forecasted at 4.96 per cent.<\/p>\n

The slight reduction from 6.1 per cent on the municipal portion of your tax bill to 5.66 per cent came after staff from both municipalities met, looking for ways to shave administrative dollars off the fire budget and strategize how requests from the department can be financed best over the next several years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issues in fire are related to the implementation of a Draft Fire Master Services Plan that causes an awful lot of funding pressure for them,\u201d said Town Treasurer Dan Elliott at this week\u2019s meeting. \u201c[Key in that] is the need for a new fire station serving the central district of Newmarket and Aurora. Because of the growth in the community, that is where the pressure is for increased fire services to maintain our service level.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Draft Master Fire Plan calls for a new fire station near the border of both towns, but consultants retained by the CYFS to draft the plan have earmarked a location near Yonge Street and St. John\u2019s Sideroad as the ideal. <\/p>\n

\u201cSince then, the administrative staff from both of our municipalities have met and we\u2019re going to be proposing [to the Joint Council Committee] for their next meeting a revised draft budget that reduces 6.1 per cent down to 5.66 for us,\u201d said Mr. Elliott, noting future tasks include working on smoothing out these costs over the next five years, calling on Aurora\u2019s tax rate stabilization reserves.<\/p>\n

The use of tax rate stabilization reserves raised some questions among Council, who wanted to ensure this would be the best way forward. Councillor Michael Thompson, for instance, said much of the funds currently in that account were in place to help the municipality wean itself off things like supplementary taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like we\u2019re now placing a lot of pressure on the stabilization reserve to not only smooth out fire, but smooth out our supplementary taxes as well,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson.<\/p>\n

The pressure on this account to buffer supplementary taxes is now over, countered Mr. Elliott, adding his department was now anticipating a surplus in this regard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strategy on fire will draw on stabilization, but to what extent will depend on how the JCC (Joint Council Committee) funds the Fire Chief and how they implement the fire master plan and the timing with which they do that. If they put in the new crew early, we\u2019ll probably be drawing more heavily onto it. Our strategy is simply to pass that onto the taxpayer evenly over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Aurora CAO Neil Garbe, who participated in talks that whittled down the fire costs, discussions included allocating a revenue stream for the fire pressure and fitting the fire department into that stream.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur thinking is there might be one year where salaries and benefits are marginally higher, marginally lower the next year, so we\u2019re trying to give a steady stream of money and fit that spending into that envelope,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a bit iterative on that account, so hopefully by the time JCC sees it we will be able to figure out exactly what the over\/under is on some of those years.\u201d<\/p>\n

As discussions around the fire budget continued, for Councillor Wendy Gaertner, it was important to strike that right balance between finances as well as health and safety concerns. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is our responsibility as a Council to our residents with respect to providing them appropriate protection?\u201d she wondered. \u201cIt is something we need to look at because we\u2019re talking about health and safety spending and we\u2019re talking about tax pressure. We have a responsibility to our residents and our new residents. I don\u2019t know how we can put those two together to accomplish both purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s session provided an opportunity for residents to sound off on how they would like to see their dollars spent \u2013 or not spent, as the case might be.<\/p>\n

Long-time trails advocate Klaus Wehrenberg was on hand to encourage Council to include provisions to ensure trails in any opportunities arising from the development of the Highland Gate Golf Course into a residential development, while Mr. Elliott outlined two written submissions received from the public.<\/p>\n

The first was a \u201clengthy\u201d one asking the Town to implement a \u201cresponsible pet ownership program\u201d for Aurora, that would include signs in municipal parks, boosts in animal licensing, and programs for fostering responsible pet ownership.<\/p>\n

A further email spoke against tax increases larger than the current rate of inflation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe suggested that now is time for Council in budget to start cutting services and making the hard decisions necessary to keep those budget increases at the current rate of inflation,\u201d said Mr. Elliott.<\/p>\n

Budget deliberations continue next Monday, March 2 at 7 p.m., with budget presentations scheduled from the Aurora Public Library Board, the Aurora Historical Society, and the Aurora Cultural Centre Board, at 7 p.m. Further talks are earmarked for the same time the following Monday. All deliberations take place in Council Chambers.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora\u2019s proposed residential tax increase now stands at 5.66 per cent, following the beginning of discussions on the Town\u2019s operating budget.<\/p>\n

Council kicked off deliberations…<\/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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2zS","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 07:19:13","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\/9912","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=9912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}