2025 Budget

Strong Mayor Powers

As of October 31, 2023, the Government of Ontario expanded strong Mayor powers to the Town of Halton Hills. Strong mayor powers offer resources to heads of Council to accelerate the implementation of key shared municipal-provincial priorities such as housing, transit, and infrastructure. As part of the strong mayor powers, Mayor Lawlor is required to table a Mayor’s budget and propose her own municipal budget. As part of the process, the Mayor’s budget is subject to Council amendments, a Mayoral veto and Council override.

Introduction

The Town of Halton Hills is committed to fostering and maintaining a high quality of life for residents, businesses and visitors. Investing in the municipality by preparing a realistic and responsible budget is integral to building a healthy community. There are many considerations in developing the municipal budget including the current financial environment, Council’s priorities as identified in their 2023-2026 Strategic Plan and legislated and mandatory service requirements.

This page provides information about the budget as well as information about taxes. The Town’s budget reflects the cost of providing and maintaining services. Property taxes reflect the shared cost to pay for these services and are blended with the tax rates for Halton Region and the boards of education.

2025 Focus: State of Good Repair

The term ‘state of good repair’ refers to keeping assets in good condition or good working order. For the Town, this means investing in its current assets such as facilities, roads, bridges and other infrastructure that the municipality already owns.

The Town’s budget is made up of two parts – an operating budget and a capital budget.

The operating budget covers the on-going day-to-day expenses of a municipality to cover programs and services to residents. This includes items such as staff salaries, fire services, and community services.

The capital budget typically includes larger expenditures that result in either a new asset (to address growth demands) or repairs to an existing asset. Repairs to existing assets are driven by the Town’s Corporate Asset Management Program (CAM), which focuses on preserving the condition of assets and extending their useful lives in the most economical way possible by keeping them in a state of good repair.

Town Taxes and Special Levies

The Town of Halton Hills collects taxes on behalf of Halton Region, the boards of education, and the municipality. Only 0.51 cents of every tax dollar goes towards the programs and services provided by the Town.

Property tax rates are based on the assessed value of a home as conducted by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC). For a detailed explanation on how property taxes are determined, please refer to the ‘2025 Budget FAQs’ document.

Special levies are raised to provide a dedicated funding source to a specific need.

The Mayor's 2025 budget recommends an increase of 9.14%, including the following changes to special levies:

• State of Good Repair Levy – annual increase of 1.28% for maintaining assets in a state of good repair.
• Fire Services Levy – new annual amount of 0.45% to meet health & safety needs of growth.
• Healthcare Levy – no change to annual amount

Challenges

The Town is faced with a number of fiscal challenges many of which are experienced by municipalities across Ontario including non-discretionary budget impacts resulting from inflationary concerns such as high construction costs and downloaded services from the Province of Ontario.

Challenges impacting the 2025 budget include:

• Inflationary impacts: Consumer Price Index, Construction Price Index, supply chain constraints
• Higher cost of borrowing (interest rate impacts)
• Low assessment growth
• Resourcing needs to maintain existing services and respond to downloaded and legislated changes
• Realignment of Regional services and Provincial legislative requirements contributing to Town budget increase

Ward Meetings

The Mayor and Councillors met with residents through four meetings held in each of the wards. Input received from residents will be considered when Council deliberates the 2025 budget. Thank you to all who provided comments.