Belleville 2022 tax increase under two per cent

Belleville ratepayers are looking at a tax hike below two per cent this year.

The city’s 2022 budget received approval by city council at a special meeting on Tuesday.

The budget came in with the tax increase stretching from 1.9 per cent for urban to below one per cent for rural.

The percentage tax increases in the four city wards are as follows:

1.9% for Belleville Urban
1.92% for Cannifton Urban
1.26% Cannifton Rural
0.97% Rural

Mayor Panciuk added, “There’s going to be significant growth in the east end of Belleville, off Haig Road. Then also, on the west end at the Loyalist Secondary Plan. We expect that in 2025 a new sanitary pumping station will come on line which will unlock 9,000 additional dwellings in that area. We’re going to see growth in different parts of the city, not just in Cannifton. Certainly Settlers Ridge and Caniff Mills and those areas are seeing good growth.”

Regarding transit service to the Cannifton area, the mayor noted, “It’s been a challenge trying to run a pilot project during COVID times. We do expect this September we’re going to see significant increases in our transit ridership. If you recall before COVID we were setting all new records.”  He said, “We had over 1.2 million riders in the year 2019. It’s going to be something sort of getting back to normal and we’ll have a better understanding of the people who are using that service.”

“Having transit service in an area also allows for mobility service which is the public transit option for people who are disabled. Wheelchaired or have other mobility issues.”

The bus route in the Cannifton area will remain in service through to March of next year.

Any decision on further service will be up to the next council.

Panciuk explained, “Transit service is important for on-demand as well as mobility and we want to see some data about what the uptake will be this fall. This term we’ve been able to extend mobility into the urban part of Thurlow Ward because of the trial basis but we’re going to have to make some difficult decisions. Is transit a core service that a city provides and people get to pick and choose about?”

Council decided not to go back to the per capita rate and provide an additional $80,000 to the Bay of Quinte Regional Marketing Board.
Panciuk said, “And the reason why we’re not doing that is because we’re already funding them to the tune of $450,000 which is significantly more than we’ve funded them in the past.”

He added, “The Bay of Quinte Regional Marketing Board is a really important partner for the city and they do good work. We’ve now given them record amounts of money to advertise our community. The decision was should we also pay a per capita fee and we chose not to. We felt that it was better to give taxpayers some relief and have BQRMB come up with a strategy to deal with employee recruitment or getting people to move to Belleville through other means through their tourism budget.”

In terms of user fees and charges there is a seven per cent increase in core area recreation and culture.

Some areas are expecting big revenue increases after two years of COVID-19.

This includes the Sports and Wellness Centre.

Also, the user fees and charges in the core area of recreation and culture show an increase of 7.4 per cent.