There's little flash in Thunder Bay's 2022 budget as savings become tough to find

Municipal budgets used to get many local reporters excited — curious to see what big projects the city had on tap for the upcoming year.

In 2022, like many previous years, once you open those budget documents, there's not as much to be excited about.

The City of Thunder Bay, which released its proposed 2022 budget on Tuesday, which starts off with a potential tax levy increase of 2.29 per cent. That figure is more or less on target with previous years, and very close to the figure administration targeted for an annual increase of 2.25 per cent.

The figure translates into an increase of $4.7 million.

City manager Norm Gale said the only reason administration didn't get to its target amount, is the late addition of fencing for the Thunder Bay Police Service headquarters building, which increased the levy.

Savings are becoming tougher to find, and the city is seeing little growth in its assessment base, meaning there is not enough growth in the tax base to offset increases to the city budget.

Other major drivers include the increasing cost of emergency services — police, fire and EMS. Police will see a budget increase of $1.6 million, while Superior North EMS, licensing and enforcement and the parks budget will see a $1 million increase, with most of that attributed to EMS.

Gale said continual increases for emergency services, which are going up at a much higher rate than other city departments, cannot continue to happen without changes to city services, or larger tax increases.

"It's not sustainable if you want to keep pressure on the tax rate, and you want to maintain other programs and services," he said. "The math simply does not work."

On the capital side, much of the budget is for maintenance of city assets, such as building maintenance, and replacing outdated fleet vehicles.

However, there are some larger projects the city is planning to move forward with this year.

The parks department will see some major capital spending, about $8.7 million, which includes a new playground at Boulevard Lake, repaving the parking lot at Hillcrest Park, improvements to numerous multi-use trails, and starting work on the Waterfront Trail.

Nearly $8 million will also be spent on a variety of roadwork, and millions more on upgrading sewers and storm sewers throughout the city.

The city is also moving forward on the creation of an organics collection program, which was deemed a priority by the public about eight years ago. The $100,000 budgeted for this year would be the continuation of creating a plan, with the actual collection system still a couple of years away.