Mississauga taxpayers choose tax hikes over service cuts
Tuesday, November 06, 2007 – 12:45 PM
By: Charlene Close
Mississauga politicians are considering a 3.9 per cent tax increase in 2008. The budget includes $2.4-million to expand transit (Photo by: Charlene Close/680News)
While the City of Toronto struggles to come up with ways to pay the bills, the City of Mississauga isn’t thinking twice about how it will bring in more money. Mississauga’s budget committee is getting down to serious business and a nearly four per cent tax hike will likely be the end result when the numbers are finalized in the new year. People in Canada’s sixth largest city are used to paying more.
Mississauga politicians have chosen to increase taxes to retain service levels. In the past three years tax increases have come in at 5.8, 5.9 and 4.7 per cent. The proposed increase for 2008 is 3.9 per cent for an extra $10-million. That’s worth about $39 more a year for the average home assessed at $365,000.
“We have increased taxes quite significantly because one of the things we’ve heard from our citizens is they value the services they get from the city of Mississauga and they don’t want to see them cut back,” Director of Finance for Mississauga, Rob Rossini, told 680News.
What will people in Mississauga get if they have to pay more? Among the highlights in the preliminary 2008 budget: $2.4-million in expanded transit services, more money for more parks and arts and culture. The increase would also help pay for a new state of the art firefighter training facility.
“It would have 15 more buses on the street with expanded services and 50 some odd drivers so we’d be improving certain routes, adding new routes and expanding other routes,” Rossini said.
Mississauga’s financial situation cannot be fairly compared to Toronto’s considering Toronto’s operating budget adds up to nearly $7-billion and Mississauga’s is worth $500-million. But Rossini said there is an area where the two cities have a lot in common.
“I think one of the other things that we’re dealing with that other municipalities are dealing with is struggling with infrastructure funding and funding their infrastructure deficit. One of the things that this budget at 3.9 per cent tax increase, it doesn’t address that,” Rossini explained.
