The City of Windsor's 2025 budget is expected to be the most challenging in nearly 20 years according to Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens.
Dilkens addressed the looming budget issues during Monday's council meeting as he proposed three committees of council be formed to examine various aspects of the city's operating budget in the search for savings.
While Dilkens would not reveal any estimates over how bad the situation may be or if any potential tax increase could be in the double digits, he told council they all need to be engaged in looking at service delivery and where efficiency and savings could be found.
He wants to engage all of city council to do the hard work and the heavy lifting to look at all the service areas to get this number down.
"We'll find the cuts. I'm not going to put that out there that we're looking at double digits. We've always done the hard work for many, many years here at city hall, for 20 years," he says. "We're going to continue to do that hard work, but with respect to the services we deliver, we need all of council to be engaged and looking at that service delivery to find areas for savings that we can get this down to a level that residents would support.
The mayor blamed inflationary and contractual pressures involving staff salaries for the challenging operating budget but says they have to go through and do the heavy lifting.
"If we want to bring the budget down to a reasonable rate for residents, all of council has to be engaged to do that work and make recommendations, some of which may be very difficult, some of which may involve service cuts," he says.
However, Dilkens was not ready to say if the cuts would include job losses.
"We won't go there yet. Let's look at it. I don't want to ring the panic bell or alarm bell; I just want to go through and do the work. We've been able to do the work every year, and I trust my colleagues that they're going to be able to go through and have hard conversations. I think there are no sacred cows; everything is on the table. We'll look at everything to make sure we're finding the appropriate balance," he says.
A structure and process for how the committees will operate is being finalized, but once formed, the committees will work with administration to find savings before sending the measures on to the mayor.
The mayor must present the proposed budget by February 1, 2025 under Ontario's Strong Mayor Powers, at which point council will have 30 days to review and make any recommendations for change.
Last year, Dilkens presented his first budget under the Strong Mayor Powers, making him responsible for preparing and presenting the budget to city council for their consideration.
The 2024 budget was passed with a 3.91 percent property tax increase; however, the tax rate was increased in May 2024 after the mayor reopened the budget as $3.2 million more in spending was approved to support the Strengthen the Core—Downtown Windsor Revitalization plan.
The additional spending increased the final tax rate by 0.70 percent to 4.61 percent.