Newmarket Mayor John Taylor warned about the significant pressures the municipality is facing on its finances from inflation, infrastructure funding and tariffs during his annual luncheon March 5.
Taylor addressed the town’s financial picture to a gathering of community and business leaders, highlighting the difficulties the municipality is experiencing. By Taylor’s own admission, the presentation was more sombre than in previous years, given how challenged municipalities are financially without more help from other levels of government.
Taylor noted that 10 per cent of jobs in Newmarket are tied to exports. Speaking to the challenge of tariffs, Taylor said the most vital thing would be supporting local businesses.
“This is going to be extremely impactful. It is going to be a very, very rough road. But make no mistake about it, we have to stand firm,” he said. “Our sovereignty is on the line. We have to be very serious about it. We have to be ready for the very long haul.”
Taylor’s presentation went into the details of the town’s budget, taxes and what those taxes pay for, along with the challenges. Hosted annually by the Central York Chamber of Commerce, the mayor’s luncheon features a presentation on important issues in the town.
Besides tariffs, Taylor covered other financial hurdles the town is facing, including rapid inflation in recent years, climate change and underfunding from other levels of government.
Taylor said towns and cities collect 12 per cent of tax dollars but have 60 per cent of the infrastructure. He said the push from other levels of government to reduce development charges ― costs paid by developers to help pay for the infrastructure required by growth — is completely wrong and will not improve housing affordability.
“It is the most flawed policy direction I have ever seen in my 19 years (in politics),” Taylor said of development charge reductions. “We’re not just trying to get money for the town. We don’t just collect money and keep it sitting around. We need it to build the cities of the future.”
Electrification is also a point of concern, Taylor said. With so much more demand for energy coming due to electrification, Taylor said it will be hard for energy corporations like NT Power to keep up. That is why, he said, the town is carefully examining selling off or merging the company, with the working theory that being part of a bigger conglomeration will be needed to have the scale to fund the electrical infrastructure that must be built.
“We would be part of an entity that has the space and the scale and the access to equity to build the kind of infrastructure that has to be built,” Taylor said.
Asked about how this is any different than the province selling off publicly held things like the Highway 407 ETR, Taylor said the difference is that is being sold to a private stakeholder, which the town will not do when it comes to NT Power, looking instead for a public entity.
Taylor spent time to highlight the town’s financial budgets and operating picture. He said the town is making great efforts to rebuild its reserve balances to prepare for future infrastructure needs, going from about $80 million in 2016 to $180 million today. But he said more effort there will be needed, with inflation significantly hitting the buying power of that $180 million.
“We have to keep putting more money away to make sure we’re not leaving future generations holding the bag,” he said.
The presentation last touched on tax increases, with Taylor noting Newmarket has the lowest property taxes in York Region per capita, and is now about 13 per cent below the GTA average.
Chamber president Chris Emanuel said the presentation made clear important issues that people might normally have a hard time understanding.
“You take complex issues and you have a way of connecting them to the average person,” Emanuel said. “That’s much appreciated.”
Taylor joked that he feels as if he inspired the audience last year and depressed them this year.
“If I had have known things were going to get quite tense in these last few days, I would have tried to take a lighter topic,” he said. “I hope it was valuable information.”