Wellesley council approves draft 2026 budget in principle

Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Wellesley residents will see the township portion of their property tax bill increase by just under 3.5 per cent, which includes a 0.5 per-cent greening levy, after township council tentatively approved the township’s 2026 draft budget just before the holiday break.

Meeting for its final budget deliberation of the year on Dec. 18, 2025, council was presented two last-minute changes to the draft budget. The first was a $30,000 increase to the operating budget to account for staff benefits being underbudgeted in previous iterations of the draft budget, and the other was an opportunity for council to reduce the township’s proposed contributions to reserves in 2026, which was originally set at $629,000 to help pay off the township’s 10-year capital infrastructure funding gap, by as much as $125,000.

“We heard council loud and clear over the last two meetings and we undertook a comprehensive review of the budget with a focus on the asset management plan,” township director of corporate services Jeff Dyck said. “Over the past week, I met with Watson (& Associates Economist Ltd.) and mapped a lot of the analysis (they) prepared (for the asset management plan). So, I went account by account, tried to understand where (their) numbers were coming from, and what we were able to do is identify in the analysis (they) hadn’t picked up one of our reserve contributions as a capital-reserve contribution. It was classified as an operating reserve contribution.

“So, when I now take that reserve contribution and reclassify it as a capital, we are now over-contributing to our reserves if we were to follow the asset management plan.”

Dyck explained the misclassified reserve contribution in question is based on how much the township will receive in gravel royalties in 2026 since 100 per cent of that money will be transferred to the township’s infrastructure reserve.

While Dyck told councillors staff budgeted $125,000 in revenue from gravel royalties in the 2026 budget, that number is an estimate, but it does allow council to reduce its contributions to reserves by a maximum of that amount while still closing the township’s infrastructure funding gap in 10 years – though he noted annual adjustments to the plan may be necessary to keep it on track, especially if gravel royalties come in lower than expected this year.

While the two changes to the draft budget reduced the proposed levy increase to 3.8 per cent from the original 4.99 per cent proposed at council’s first budget meeting at the end of November, councillors opted to further reduce the impact on taxpayers by allocating an additional $25,500 from the township’s levy-stabilization reserve – roughly $257,000 from which had already been allocated to the 2026 draft budget, leaving a balance of roughly $500,000 – bringing the levy increase down to 3.49 per cent.

For a home assessed by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) in 2016 at the township’s average assessed value of $416,000, the 3.49 per-cent levy increase will equate to an annual increase to township property taxes by nearly $43 or $3.57 monthly.

“However much above or below a house is assessed at, that’s how much you would sway from that $43 (increase),” township CAO Rik Louwagie clarified.

While council discussed the potential for increasing the 0.5 per-cent greening levy back to 0.75 per cent to help the township meet it’s greenhouse gas reduction targets, as well as reducing the proposed non-unionized staff wage increase from 3.2 per cent to further alleviate the tax burden on ratepayers, neither budget amendment made it to the table for a vote.

The township administers tax bills sent to residents that include tax levies collected for the Township of Wellesley, Region of Waterloo and school boards (education tax). The breakdown of these levies on residents’ annual tax bills is approximately as follows:

• Township of Wellesley: 31 per cent

• Region of Waterloo: 56 per cent

• School board: 13 per cent

The Township of Wellesley’s levy increase applies to the township levy only. Regional levy increases are not included in the township’s draft budget.

Wellesley council will consider approval of the 2026 budget bylaw at its Jan. 13 meeting.