Your Property Taxes are Going Up by a Whopping 9.2%

You read that right 9.2% and it is an ugly increase.  Our property Taxes are made up of a City portion and a Region of Peel portion.  This year the City of Mississauga hiked property taxes by 8.8% the largest increase ever in the history of Mississauga.  Add to that a hefty  Regional Tax increase of 12.5% and you realize why our taxes are going up so much.

Explaining the numbers
For every dollar you pay in taxes, 37 cents go to the Region, 47% go to the Region and 16 cents is Education tax.

What happened?

I am not going to defend this 9.2% tax increase.  At a time of economic uncertainty and inflation, to me this increase is unacceptable and that is why I voted against both budgets. Unfortunately, mine was the minority voice and both budgets passed. 

The City portion increased in large measure because the Council voted to provide enhanced snow clearance on bike lanes and sidewalks and windrow clearing.  We knew all along that there was going to be a hefty police budget coming (more on that later) and so I believe we could have made a decision to keep the city tax increases modest in 2025 instead of bringing in the largest tax hike in the history of Mississauga. 

Now coming to the Region of Peel budget.  The big driver of the Regional budget increase is the whopping 23% increase in the Police budget.  We indeed need more police officers and I fully support hiring more officers.  We are under-policed compared to other cities including Toronto and there is no question that crime is rising.  However, the challenge was that the Police Board was unwilling to explain why the cost of hiring 250 uniformed officers and 65 civilians is $60 million.  One issue with the budget was that the $60 million for new hires assumes that all 315 new people will be hired on January 1, even though we know the plan is to hire officers evenly throughout the year, including hiring some in the last quarter of 2025.  The response was that budgeting this way creates a cushion for emergencies.  However, I was unable to get clarity on, how much of the 60 million is for new hires, how much is for policing emergencies, and how these numbers were arrived at.  

Apparently, the Police board does not have to provide budget details to the council and has to provide high-level numbers. 

Asking councillors to vote on a significant police budget increase without a full understanding of the numbers is not good public policy and is not fair to the taxpayer.

There is another inequity in the budget.  Believe it or not, Mississauga taxpayers pay 62% of the Police budget while Brampton property taxpayers pay only 38% of the police budget although Brampton is now larger than Mississauga by population. One can understand why Brampton Councillors were happy to vote in support of the Police Budget.  They are after all getting a bargain.
I was prepared to support the Police budget if there could have been some flexibility and some reduction in the budget.  However, the Police Board turned down the Council's request to sharpen its pencil.  So we were left with a hard choice.  Yes, we need to hire more officers but we also need to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely. 

I hoped that by turning down the budget, it would go to arbitration and come back with a more reasonable increase. Even if it came back at the same number, at the very least the budget would have been looked at by a second set of eyes. The 23% is the single largest police budget increase in the history of the province. In any event, the Police budget passed even though a majority of Mississauga councillors voted against the budget. 

Two big takeaways for me are that, Brampton needs to start paying its fair share for policing costs and we need police budgets to be more transparent.  For this to happen, the provincial government needs to make changes.  My job as your councillor is to raise awareness on these issues and put up the best fight I can to protect taxpayers. 

I would love your feedback.  Please share your opinion using the quick poll on this page to let me know if you agree with how I voted.