Lambton County’s $284-million 2024 budget, with a 5.5 per cent increase in property taxes, was approved close to where it began at county council’s budget session Wednesday.
Lambton County’s $284-million 2024 budget, with a 5.5 per cent increase in property taxes, was approved close to where it began at county council’s budget session Wednesday.
Advertisement 2
Article content
The budget boosts the county’s share of local property tax bills by $26 per $100,000 of individual home assessment. Property tax bills also include local municipal and school board taxes.
Article content
“In the end I think it’s a fair budget,” said Warden Kevin Marriott, the mayor of Enniskillen Township. “It is on the high side compared to what we’re used to in Lambton, but it’s lower than many neighboring municipalities that are going through the same major issues that we are with affordable housing.”
The 2024 budget includes $3 million for affordable housing reserves, and local funding for a proposed new 50-unit public housing project on Kathleen Avenue in Sarnia, for which Lambton also is seeking provincial funding.
Several councilors moved unsuccessfully to make cuts Wednesday or dip into reserves to bring the tax hike below five per cent, including trying to set aside less money for new affordable housing, which county council reported last year was its top priority.
Advertisement 3
Article content
Ian Veen, mayor of Oil Springs, proposed the first of several cuts councilors rejected Wednesday.
“I understand that this is an important issue, but I also understand that somewhere along the line we have to make a cut,” Veen said. “People can’t afford to keep going” in the face of tax increases.
“We have to make this budget come down,” by one or 1 1/2 percentage points, he said.
Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley countered that housing and shelter is county council’s top priority. “I think this would be a backward motion,” he said of Veen’s proposal.
The county said in January that 313 people in Lambton were on a local list of those experiencing homelessness, including those living in shelters and transitional housing, or living unsheltered outdoors.
Advertisement 4
Article content
“We are getting generations of people relying on government,” Sarnia Coun. Bill Dennis said in opposing county spending on new affordable housing. “If we provide them with everything they need to survive, what incentive is there for them to get their lives together and get a job… they have no one to blame but themselves.”
But Warwick Township Mayor Todd Case said, “At the end of the day, this is our responsibility.”
Regardless of who caused the affordable housing crisis, “this does fall on our desk,” he said.
Lambton County provides its 11 member municipalities with a long list of services, including county roads, municipal garbage disposal, libraries, two museums, an art gallery, ambulances, public health services, three long-term care homes, public housing and social services.
Advertisement 5
Article content
The only change to the proposed budget Wednesday was a decision to authorize up to $400,000 this year to begin engineering and planning for a traffic roundabout at the busy Petrolia Line and Kimball Road intersection in St. Clair Township, site of fatal crashes in recent years.
That up to $400,000 will be added to the amount borrowed in future years to pay for constructing the traffic circle. It’s on track to be built in 2026 at an estimated cost of $3.8 million.
A 66-year-old truck driver died in a May 2020 crash at the corner, where a 92-year-old Wallaceburg resident died in a collision five months later.
“It’s just a bad, bad corner,” said St. Clair Township Mayor Jeff Agar who, along with others, has been pushing for safety improvements at the intersection of the two county roads.
“At least it’s in the queue now… and it’s going ahead,” Agar said. “Hopefully we don’t have to have another major fatality there.”
Article content