Town’s corporate services budget could rise by 46.4 per cent

Talks continued last Thursday about 2023’s operating budget, including plans to spend $1.8 million on new projects, initiatives and municipal employees.

Council spent its third budget review meeting going over every line in the budget, with questions for town staff about how their financial situation has changed this year, and debated what to keep and what could get pushed out of 2023’s spending plan.

Of the $1.8 million the town wants to allocate to new business cases for 2023, nearly $991,000 will go to paying for the salaries of a new cohort of municipal employees and changing contracts for others.

That amount includes the salaries and associated employer-related costs, and is a blended cost based on the timing of recruitment and hiring.

Chief administrative officer Marnie Cluckie said senior staff ranked the new positions in order of highest to lowest priority, based on meeting legislative requirements, advancing the town’s strategic plan and what council’s priorities are for the year.

Many of the positions are under the corporate services department umbrella, including the top five ranked new employees.

“Corporate services represents the entire organization,” Cluckie explained. “A lot of what we found is there was a need for positions across the organization that would help all of the organization.”

The corporate services budget will rise by 46.4 per cent compared to 2022, and will impact the tax levy by 7.3 per cent. Altogether, the property tax levy could rise by as much as 8.56 per cent, or $104.63, per household.

The top-ranked position is technically not a new one: a full-time employee contract for a communications coordinator, currently a temporary contract role held by Marah Minor. The town hopes to allocate $90,671 for a yearly salary in 2023 from the tax levy. That figure is this position’s total cost, including salary, benefits and associated employer-related costs.

This coordinator’s responsibility is to handle communications within the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake among staff, between the town and the public, publishing news releases and managing the town’s social media platforms.

“This role and a number of other roles have been funded through grants,” Cluckie said. “We would like to solidify this (role).”

While not high on the list, one role in particular generated lengthy discussion among councillors — a new secondary planner, with a pro-rated salary of $69,372.

As Kirsten McCauley, the director of community and development services explained, this new planner is being brought on to take on a significant increase in applications over the years from the many developers seeking to build properties in town.

“We do need more staff,” she said. “We are very strapped in terms of our capacity to process the applications.”

Coun. Erwin Wiens agreed. He and other councillors, including Coun. Tim Balasiuk, said hiring a planner should be higher on the list, as it’s currently eighth in the ranking.

“We get the most amount of complaints about planning,” Wiens said, adding that with Bill 23’s changes to the Planning Act coming into effect July 1, he anticipates more applications coming down the pipeline, with strict timelines on when they need to be processed.

The salaries for the new employees on this list are higher than what they would have been in previous years, thanks to changes with the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, a public pension fund Niagara-on-the-Lake pays its employees who opt in.

Before 2023, municipal employees had to be on the job for two years before they could begin qualifying for this pension fund, but with these new rules implemented, Niagara-on-the-Lake is now required to provide that fund to its employees.

The budget review lasted two and a half hours, with Zalepa proposing that council once again push forward its date for approving the final budget beyond the currently planned Thursday, March 23.

The budget review committee will meet again on this date for another discussion on the operating budget, before meeting at a later date for one last talk, then approval.