Council and staff review 2026 draft capital and operating budgets in record time

Proposed levy increase sits at just over four per cent after first budget meeting

By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A decision earlier this year by Mayor Al Strathdee not to use his provincially legislated Strong Mayor Powers to table his official draft 2026 budget for the Town of St. Marys until after staff proposed a draft budget and council had the chance to review it and make changes led to the most-efficient first budget meeting the town has seen for some time.

Council held its first 2026 budget meeting Oct. 21 and, after just under five hours, staff had presented all 79 proposed capital projects for next year, a review of the holdover projects from this year and a line-by-line examination of each department’s operational budget. By the end of the meeting, town CAO Brent Kittmer described the process that, prior to this year, often unfolded over several meetings across two to three months.

“Congratulations, council. That’s the quickest in my 10 years that council’s ever gone through the budget,” Kittmer said. “I think it’s a testament to the work of staff, the work of your treasurer and the very pragmatic way they put together the budget, and the continuous improvement mindset the organization has adopted. That’s why we’ve achieved $200,000 in our operations added to the net positive, even while adding more staff and internalizing things. You have a very good staff here who understands how to operate the municipality very efficiently.”

At the beginning of the meeting, the draft budget was presented with a proposed levy increase of $827,584, up 5.27 per cent to just over $16.5 million from the roughly $15.7-million 2025 budget. Factoring in an estimated $200,000 in growth to the tax base this year from new businesses and homes, the actual impact on taxpayers was presented as a 3.94 per-cent increase over what they paid this year.

According to the budget, that would equate to a $164 increase to the property taxes paid for a median residential home plus an increase of $5 to the annual cost of wheelie bin.

This year’s capital budget, which is funded through reserves, grants, donations and other sources, and does not have a direct impact on the levy, includes more than $8.3 million in new spending.

Following the departure of former treasurer André Morin earlier this year, finance manager and deputy treasurer Spencer Steckley took the lead in drafting next year’s budget. Among the factors influencing the proposed tax-levy increase for next year, Steckley said the cost of staffing was the biggest with an additional $498,925 included in the draft budget.

While cost-of-living increases, increases to benefits and wages, and new hires account for most of that cost, the planned return to a pre-2020 organizational structure wherein the corporate services department is divided into a finance department and a tourism and economic development department, and the decision to create a formal parks department to avoid a $100,000 bill for turf services next year also drove the increase in staff costs.

To help reduce the impact of those additional staffing costs related to the finance and tourism-and-economic-development departments, $35,000 was transferred to the budget from the levy stabilization reserve. Though the creation of a parks department would see additional staffing costs, overall, the budget will see a reduction by more than $20,000 by internalizing turf services.

The levy increase is also being driven by increases in costs for services from external partners. An estimated $189,867 has been added to next year’s draft budget to cover services provided to the town by organizations like the Upper Thames Conservation Authority, Stratford Social Services, Perth County Paramedic Services, Spruce Lodge and Huron Perth Public Health – the latter of which is the only external organization that has finalized its 2026 budget request at this point.

“Unique in this budget is this is the first year where policing is the largest external transfer,” Kittmer said. “Policing alone is a more significant increase than all other external transfers that we have to provide. It has a $198,000 impact on your operating budget and a new, $95,000-per-year-for-10-years cost on your capital budget. In effect, policing’s going up by almost $300,000 this year, which has not happened since the days of the OPP.”

“Costs are escalating at a greater rate with a year-over-year budget increase sitting at 14 per cent,” Steckley said of the proposed increase to the town’s share of the next year’s Stratford Police Service operational budget. “Just note this figure still needs to be finalized.”

Additionally, the town will be paying $144,665 in debt servicing related to the purchase of 90 Carling St. and the town has increased its proposed 2026 transfer to capital reserves by $104,000 – approximately $73,000 of which will go into a reserve for the future development of the intergenerational community hub at 14 Church St. N.

Mitigating those cost increases somewhat, staff managed to recoup more than $214,000 in estimated tax-funded revenues and expenditures across many departments, and saved nearly $98,000 by transferring administrative, IT, finance and human-resources costs to the town’s 100 per-cent rate-funded departments – water, wastewater and landfill.

While the proposed levy increase was 3.94 per cent inclusive of growth at the onset of the meeting, council approved two new staffing requests during the first budget meeting – an engineering co-op student at a cost to the town of $10,000 and a part-time library custodian at a cost next year of just over $22,000. These extra costs bring the proposed levy increase up to 4.15 per cent, Steckley told councillors during the meeting.

With no major changes to the draft budget, Kittmer explained for council the next steps in the budget process under the new Strong Mayor Powers legislation. First, staff will update the draft budget, present it to the mayor and then Strathdee will table the mayor’s budget – in this case, the updated version of the budget presented to council Oct. 21 – for council amendments and vetoes.

“We’d like to have the mayor formally table it with council on Nov. 11 so that those statutory deadlines can kick in. Next meeting, I’ll present a report for council to consider shortening the amendment period to the budget from 30 down to 10 days so that when the mayor tables the budget on Nov. 11, you would have until Nov. 21 to make any formal amendments to the budget,” Kittmer told councillors.

“The mayor, I think, has 10 days after that to veto those, and then 15 after that for council’s override (of any vetoes with a two-thirds majority vote).”

Since council had the opportunity to make changes to the draft budget on Oct. 21, Kittmer said there is every expectation there won’t be a need for the veto/override process and the budget can be approved and adopted on Dec. 16.