At the July 10th Regional Council meeting, Council approved Halton’s 2020 Budget Directions Report.
It will help staff attempt to maintain current service levels for Regional programs.
That includes recent Provincial funding announcements.
In a statement, Halton Regional Chair Gary Carr says the Report is crucial to funding areas like infrastructure.
Some of Halton’s Budget priorities for 2020 include:
– Public health: maintaining service levels following a recent decision to freeze Provincial funding for public health units.
– Paramedic services: addressing increased costs associated with inflation, rising call volumes, maintaining response times, population and other growth pressures while Provincial funding continues to be held at the 2018/19 level (which was based on 2017 costs).
– Children’s services: maintaining service levels following anticipated reductions of Provincial funding in 2020, including a new cost-sharing requirement for Child – – Care Expansion Plan funding, elimination of the fee stabilization funding (supports compensation, including increased vacation and sick leave entitlements for licensed child care workers) and cost-sharing for all administrative funding.
– Employment and social services: accounting for Provincial subsidies to support Ontario Works administration costs being held at the 2018 level.
– Waste management: additional funding to reflect inflationary contract increases, tonnage growth and anticipated changes to the cost of processing organic waste.
– Transportation: investment to support increased costs associated with road maintenance, the road resurfacing program, the state-of-good-repair for existing roads and expansion to accommodate growth and travel demand.
– Growth of the water and wastewater system: support for costs associated with upgrades and expansions to treatment plants, further improvements to treatment and new and expanded pumping stations.
– Long-Term Water Meter Strategy: funding for the implementation of an Advanced Meter Infrastructure system, which would upgrade residential water meters to increase operational efficiency, enhance functionality for customers and improve system performance.
– Basement flooding mitigation: continuation of the Region-wide Basement Flooding Mitigation Program to help prevent basement flooding caused by severe weather.
– Water and wastewater state-of-good-repair: continuing to invest in the state-of-good-repair program to maintain the good condition of existing infrastructure.
The 2020 Budget and Business Plan Council Meeting is scheduled for December 4th.
The full Budget is scheduled to be considered for approval by Regional Council on December 11th.
