In what could be seen as a gutsy move, the city has released its financial forecast, just weeks before the municipal election. For 2027, the report calls for a property tax increase of 8.2%, noting “this is lower than the earlier forecast as per the 2026 budget, which projected a $208.2 M increase and a 16.7% residential tax impact.” That Hamilton taxpayers are not facing a 16.7 percent tax increase will please only the most strident supporters of the current administration.
The report continues, “the increase reflects the cost of maintaining services, keeping up with inflation, supporting Council priorities such as housing, safety and infrastructure, and meeting forecasted costs for Boards and Agencies.” The key line here is “supporting Council priorities,”—a reference to the priority-setting exercise that council undertook in its first full year in office. This green mayor, and the left-leaning majority on council held a series of priority-setting meetings at which city staff were deliberately excluded, presumably to avoid contrarian advice, with the apparent goal of reversing decades of inaction by the dullards who had preceded them. When the final priority package was presented to council, Mayor Horwath told those present that senior staff are “here to listen.” Most of the senior staff that were present at that meeting have since been replaced, in an exercise that was admitted as an effort to get a staff that was more ideologically aligned with the new council. How’s that working out, one might ask. Those priorities, among other things, resulted in the number one reason why taxes are going up so quickly—the hiring of 800 new full-time staff. Take out the roughly 125 Police, Fire and EMS hires during that period and you end up with $67 Million in increased salaries alone added to the tax bill—a number that will only grow. When councillor Spadafora suggested a modest solution that would involve no staff reductions but simply not filling existing vacancies, a practice called “gapping,” councillor Kroetsch opposed it.
Things are going to get worse tax-wise in 2028 where staff are predicting a tax increase of 9.9 percent, followed by a drop to 5.5 percent in 2029—a figure that seems aspirational based on current performance.
The priority-setting exercise, that took place before anybody understood the realities of the city’s finances, had the impact of setting in stone significant new spending commitments that meant not one cent of those priorities were reduced, stretched out over a longer period or scrapped even as this council approved three more budgets and will not change in the years ahead with the current hands on the tiller.