Lake of Bays councillors have been slowly tackling the municipality’s 2022 budget.
They’re expected to finalize their budget discussions at their April meeting.
The first draft budget presented at their February meeting started with a levy increase of 4.33 per cent. When new funding requests were included such as $10,000 for a Community Land Trust initiative, another $10,000 request for the Dorset Health Hub, and $10,600 for water faucets at the Baysville cemeteries, council was looking at a 4.86 per cent increase on the levy.
“Our ratepayers are still suffering from loss of work or reduced income. I find this 4.86 really high,” said Councillor Nancy Tapley. Lake of Bays Mayor Terry Glover concurred, and council began slowly chipping away at expenses.
Here are some of the cuts they made as suggested by staff:
- Reduced council expense account by $5,000
- Reduced the amount set aside for community grants to plow seasonal roads by $8,000
- Removed budget for heritage in the municipality by $7,750 with reserve remaining at about $23,500
Planned road works were also deferred to 2023, thereby further decreasing expenditures for 2022. The following roads got pushed to 2023:
- Muskoka Bob Road
- Rabbit Bay Road
- Tally Ho Beach Road
- Shoe Lake Road
- Carol Street
Other projects such as a range hood for the Dwight Community Centre were also pushed to next year, as well as embarking on an economic development strategy and some computer upgrades at the libraries. In essence, council managed to reduce the 2022 operating and capital budget by $142,150 or 2.5 per cent on the levy, bringing the anticipated tax increase to 1.86 per cent.
Glover was pleased with the reduction.
At the March meeting, council also received and approved a request from the Huntsville/Lake of Bays Chamber of Commerce for $5,000 and Glover then turned to the Baysville arena.
He said the arena is expensive to operate and talked about putting some money aside for improvements to the upstairs hall to generate more rental revenue.
“I’ve spent my whole career in the hospitality industry and I can tell you that if we want to continue to compete at all—if Bracebridge builds a bunch of new buildings—it’s going to be very, very difficult and we want to continue to compete because we want to keep our arena open and costs are going to continue to go up and we’ve got to find other ways to generate revenue,” he said and challenged community groups to raise funds for improvements to the space and staff to raise funds at the arena as well.
Glover suggested putting $25,000 to the 2022 budget as seed funding to be placed in a reserve to get the ball rolling. “We could do an amazing job of renovating that space. I believe the community would take ownership of it,” he said, noting the space could be used for, among other things, weddings and indoor art shows.
“What I put to you folks is if we don’t do it, what are we looking at? We have so little hope for what will continue on there with Bracebridge building their lovely palace, whatever they’re building, and we have to compete,” said Glover who also suggested the venue could include wedding photos at the dam.
“Who knows, we get a horse and buggy taking them up and down. All kinds of fun stuff can happen it’s just a matter of, you know, do we want to get into that but how are we going to drive revenue if we’re not going to do this,” he told councillors.
In the end, council agreed.
Budget discussions and/or passing the 2022 budget is expected to occur at the Lake of Bays council meeting in April.
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