Tweed budget not yet final, Mayor hopes province will step up with more funding

The Municipality of Tweed has yet to finalize its 2025 budget but is hoping that it can lower a proposed 15 per cent tax increase.

Council has met three times to hammer out the 2025 numbers but will wait until after the ROMA Conference in January to approve the budget.

Mayor Don DeGenova says they have applied to the province for funding for various infrastructure projects and if approved, they could get the tax increase down to 11 per cent.

He says council will wait to finalize the budget until after the ROMA conference in January as he hopes to secure more funding.

“I’ve requested a delegation with Minister Surma, the Minister of Infrastructure and Minister Calandra who is the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. I want to put forth our case, again, of the need for the provincial government to begin to help us with our infrastructure costs.”

He says it is frustrating that small, rural Ontario communities are having their funding applications repeatedly denied and the money is going to larger centres.

Tweed’s proposed 2025 budget includes a two per cent tax increase for potential OPP costs in 2026.

Last month, the provincial government offered money to OPP-serviced municipalities who were facing monstrous policing costs in 2025 but DeGenova says they have not committed anything beyond that.

Tweed was looking at a 4.4 per cent tax increase just to cover policing costs in 2025 so as a precaution, the municipality is adding a two per cent tax increase and will put it into a reserve to lessen the burden in 2026.

“If the government would continue to fund those costs for us, we would pull that two per cent out of our reserve and add it to whatever the increase was going to be. So say if it was 10, we’d knock it down to eight. So we’re gonna use the money for tax purposes to keep it lower but we want to have that cushion there because we don’t wanna be hit with a 4.4 per cent automatically next year.”

With a 15 per cent tax increase, the average household increase would be $21 per month.

DeGenova says when they started budget deliberations, they were looking at 46 per cent tax increase but managed to whittle that number down.

The tax increase for 2024 was 17.8 per cent.

DeGenova says previous councils did not increase taxes enough and that is part of the reason why they are facing such large hikes.

The ROMA Conference will be held January 19 to 21 in Toronto.

DeGenova says council will meet following the conference in late January to finalize the budget.