Mississauga’s new water levy boosts city tax hike to 11%

Residents will see a 2.5% overall increase on 2016 property taxes, plus an added levy of about $100.

Thestar.com
Dec. 10, 2015
By San Grewal

Now that Mississauga is all grown up, so are the property tax bills that will be going out to its residents: In 2016, homeowners will see an effective increase of more than 11 per cent on the city’s portion of the bill.

With final council approval Wednesday, a city property tax increase of 4.9 per cent will be coupled with a new, separate storm-water charge that will average about $100 per property. That charge may be significantly less or more than $100, depending on the size of house and how much storm water runs off the property into the city’s over-burdened storm sewers.

The tax hike and the levy together will add about $177 to the average home’s property taxes, or a little more than 11 per cent on the city’s share of the bill, according to Jeff Jackson, Mississauga’s treasurer and director of finance.

However, the overall tax increase for Mississauga residents, excluding the storm water levy, will be only 2.5 per cent, thanks to a meager .7 per cent increase from the Region of Peel on the total bill, and a zero increase on the provincial education portion.

Mayor Bonnie Crombie says the sharp hikes in the city’s portion are necessary.

“We want to minimize potential risks to residents, their property and our environment,” Crombie said in an email referring to the new storm water charge. “We simply cannot kick the can down the road. We must take responsibility and invest more money in our storm water system to keep it in good working order and to avoid costly repairs in the future.”

Unlike her iconic predecessor, Hazel McCallion - who has been criticized for severely limiting tax increases for decades while an infrastructure deficit quietly grew to more than $1.5 billion - Crombie says it’s prudent now to ask residents to pay for the kind of city they want in the future.

“The past 41 years, we grew out and expanded our boundaries, but now it is time to grow up, literally,” Crombie stated.

“We must embrace greater density and urbanization in our major community nodes. Mississauga is a mature city with unrivalled potential, but we will only realize this potential if we get the fundamentals right, now. These include building a network of regionally integrated transit; addressing the growing demand for affordable housing, but tying that affordable housing to where people want and need to live along transit corridors and in community nodes; and it is about investing in the critical infrastructure, both hard and soft, that will ensure we continue to provide residents with an incredibly high quality of life.”

Critics had long warned McCallion that her reliance on development-related revenues, while keeping the tax base far lower than the city’s growing services needed, was a recipe for disaster.

The 2016 increase comes after five years of city tax hikes that averaged around 5 per cent, as aging infrastructure began to place new demands on the budget.

The 2.5 per cent overall increase doesn’t include the storm water levy, which staff said was desperately needed to fix a system that couldn’t handle several recent heavy storms, resulting in widespread flooding.

The levy more severely punishes home and business owners whose paved-over properties burden the system. It has been lauded by environmentalists and critics of urban sprawl.

Crombie said the 2016 budget illustrates her council’s commitment to smart growth and is a signal that “Mississauga is a modern city on the move.”