2025 Property Tax

Needless to say, affordability will always be a top priority for everyday taxpayers that call Ward 6 home. That is why in back-to-back years of 2023 and 2024, I voted against the 5.8% and 5.79% property tax increases respectively, especially when the last term of Council I was on, averaged more modest 2.5% yearly tax increases and still kept our City moving forward during the world-wide health care crisis in our generation!

For the 2025 Budget process, I was denied any opportunity to vote against the 5.6% property tax increase as the Mayor applied "Strong Mayor Powers" to the 2025 budget process. Indeed, this year's budget process truly left a lot to be desired. I brought forward two amendments that would have lowered the property tax tax increase. The first would have paused the Hamilton Light Rail Transit (LRT) project from spending millions of local tax dollars in 2025 because the City does not have a written agreement from the current Federal Government for its $1.7 billion share of the project and Metrolinx has not submitted its business case for the LRT to the Federal Government (nor has it assured local taxpayers that this mammoth project will be capped at $3.4 billion maximum price tag publicized thus far! Second, I attempted to pause the hiring of 16 more full-time equivalent (FTE) employees for the Municipal Law Enforcement Division given the fact that through two-and-a-half years of this Council's term, approximately 600 new FTE have been hired! Unfortunately, both of my proposed amendments were defeated by an 11 to 5 margin.