City finances
A city has three kinds of debt: financial, infrastructure, and implied future service commitments. Every lane of new road is a forty-year promise to plow, repave, and eventually rebuild. We have to be mindful about new projects and permits.
Where I stand
The city has done good work on financial debt. The operating budget has been delivered balanced year after year, without papering over gaps with one-time fixes. Long-term debt is down 46% since 2014, from $119 million to $64 million. Council has also steadily paid down the legacy unfunded pension liability that took most of the 2010s to confront. The special payment ordered by the province in 2012, roughly ten to twelve million dollars a year depending on investment returns, is on a fifteen-year amortization schedule and is approaching its end. As that obligation winds down, similar capacity frees up annually for other priorities. These are real wins, and they deserve to be named.
The second kind is the $545 million maintenance backlog spread across roads, water, sewer, and city buildings, and the 36 of 54 city buses that need replacement in the next 5 years. Assets and infrastructure that age faster than we can replace them. This deficit grows year over year. The work this term is to slow the rate at which it grows, not pretend we can erase it (see Roads and infrastructure). The city owns roughly $6.86 billion of infrastructure. Even on a conservative 75-year average lifecycle, that means around $90 million a year in capital replacement just to keep up. The 2026 General Fund Capital Budget is $53.88 million.
The third kind is the one that residents feel the most, but is not formalized at all. Every building permit is an obligation: that the lot will be serviced. With every subdivision, every amalgamation, the city made a promise: to take care of the residents.
We have to be honest with our constituents. Create an inventory of the shortcomings (long bus headways, gaps in winter clearing, deferred park maintenance, cancelled programming) with a real price tag attached to each missing item. That makes the debt visible. It also surfaces where residents are paying full property tax for half a service, where most improvement is needed.
The biggest lever we have to get ahead of infrastructure debt and service debt is increasing tax density: increasing the tax base in already serviced areas. We can’t pretend that we can have low tax rate, high quality services and low density at the same time. The measure is not what projects we get started, but how big a bill our kids inherit.
What I will push for on council
- Continue paying down debt and protecting balanced budgets, while holding on to city assets: land and real estate.
- Publish a service-shortcomings inventory with a price tag on closing each gap. Make the financial gap visible between the city we want to have and the city we can afford.
- Protect the capacity freed by the pension special payment ending. That money should fund the infrastructure backlog, not lower tax rates.