Municipal Budget 2021

Cox Ave and Faircourt Ave are local enclosed streets that have no thru traffic. With a long list of requests for sidewalks it is unlikely there will be funding available in the foreseeable future for sidewalk installation. However if the residents of the street are interested in petitioning and paying for a sidewalk please visit the following Local Improvement link. https://www.chatham-kent.ca/residents/maintenance/localimprovements . We have forwarded the information to CKPS for enforcement issues in your question.

Response provided by CKPS: We have identified this area for extra attention by our front line uniform patrol and our traffic division. 

Council sets the negotiating authority (wage and benefit increases) for both the union and non-union groups.  These parameters must be adhered to and any requests for changes to these amounts must be approved by Council. Also, Council sets the level of service.  As services reduce or increase, a review of the staffing that goes along with the service also takes place and reductions or increases are made accordingly.  

During the pandemic, the provincial government required a number of services to be reduced or closed for a period of time.  When this took place we responded by implementing necessary layoffs of approximately 50 employees, redeploying over 100 employees to areas where additional resources were imminently needed for COVID-19 response and other emergencies and an additional 75+ employees went on personal unpaid leaves.  

Employment and Social Services (ESS) delivers 20+ programs through 5 provincial ministries, including Ontario Works Assistance.  Ontario Works Assistance rates and regulations are decided by the government of Ontario and delivered by Municipalities.

Typically in Chatham-Kent:

• 17% of people receiving Ontario Works Assistance are working, but not earning enough to exit OWA
• 30% of people are “deferred” that means they have documented health or personal needs and are unable to work (they may be applying for disability, temporarily ill or dying)
• Another significant but undefined % are suffering from mental health, substance use challenges and/or homelessness and are not yet able/ready to work, but not documented as ill nor eligible for ODSP
  • ESS staff are working to help these individuals through our various programs including homelessness prevention
• 2% of cases exit each month to gainful employment
• The rest work with staff to increase education, skills and find employment, some volunteer in the meantime
• We have an employment placement program that is still going now and helping people to find work
• Most people we serve live in our larger centres close to services and do not have vehicles, they cannot get to farms
• Not all farmers or greenhouses are interested in hiring our program participants
• It is also important to note that Ontario Works Assistance rates are extremely low , a single person receives a maximum of $733 per month for food , shelter and all personal needs

Talbot Trail is currently closed just east of Coatsworth Road with a detour route in place. This section of road was closed due to erosion and safety concerns and will remain closed until funding is available to proceed with the recommended solution(s) from the Talbot Trail Municipal Class Environmental Assessment (EA). The EA is slated for completion by the end of 2021.

There has been no funding set aside for this project in the 2021 budget (subject to final Council approval).  Requests for provincial government financial support are on-going. 

Chatham-Kent has approximately 3,300 kilometers of gravel roads. The defined level of service for dust suppressant is one full application per year.  Our 2021 dust suppressant budget is $712,000.  Regarding the comments on ruts, gravel roads are monitored for quality per the guidelines established in the Minimum Maintenance Standards O. Reg. 239/02. The quality of the gravel road is closely linked to the amount of gravel applied.  Our current gravel service level is one application an average of every three years which translates to a 2021 budget level of $3.9M.  In each case (dust suppressant and gravel quantity), the frequency of application can increase but additional new funding is required.  

In the budget we have items that are in the general rate that everyone would pay for, for example, road re-paving, everyone across the municipality would contribute to that in the general rate. Then there are services that are delivered by Chatham-Kent that are only available in a certain area. For example, the Chatham urban transit system, that is area rated to the Chatham area. Of course anyone while in Chatham or if they have connected through the interurban transit to Chatham are welcomed to use the service. The tax portion of that service, with busses you have the fare that you pay for the direct user fee but as it does not cover all the costs, the remaining costs are charged to the Chatham residents. 

To address the other item in the question about drainage charges: there is two types of drainage charges;  

• if you’re a farmer and out in the rural area, drainage is looked after under the Drainage Act. For example, if a drain needs to be cleaned out, its all the participating landowners that connect to that drain that are assessed that charge. The Municipality only has to pay for the portion that is charged through the road that the drain may intersect. 
• When you get into the urban areas, drainage items are not charged directly to the homeowners, they are charged in an area rate. An example that everyone may remember, recently, the drain that goes by the courthouse property (the Grand Ave property by Crabby Joes now called Chucks) that lead into the Thames River, had a clasped under Grand Ave, that would be an item that is part of urban drainage that is area rated to all the urban areas.     

Then we have miscellaneous services that are only available in certain areas. One that was debated at Council, just recently, was the leaf and yard waste. Certain areas of Chatham-Kent (ie. Ridgetown and Tilbury) have roadside leaf and yard waste pickup in the fall, where other communities throughout Chatham-Kent perhaps do not have that service. That would not be fair to be in the general rate, where one was subsidizing the other, so that is an example of an item that was area rated to those towns that have asked for that service and will continue to charge those towns for that service, unless there is a vote at Council to no longer provide that. 

The Drainage Act has been around for over 100 years, it’s a piece of legislation, it’s a very formal process and one that is quite effective. The key word there is, benefiting landowners. For example, if you are out in Dover with the Rivard line, if there is work/maintenance on that particular drain those who benefit will pay for the work required. It’s the same concept with all area rating. The example was given of the leaf and yard waste, if you are a benefiting landowner the cost of that service is partitioned out in a very fair manor to the residents who are benefiting.     

The staffing choices that you will see that have been submitted for our budget for this particular season are all attached to very specific programs or initiatives that have either been Council driven in terms of needs of things to be accomplished over the course of the year, or there is also those attached to some of our downloaded services. You will also see as we get through the budget process that there are some positions that have been reduced. In some areas of our business for example our technology and transformation area, they have gone through a restructuring and that there have been both adds and subtracts of positions. This places them in a more favourable structure to conduct the business that we need them to, efficiently and securely within the organization. So as we get through the budget you will see all of those ins and outs of staffing.

We have a very aggressive community improvement plan, that try's to incent investors to come to Chatham-Kent, and to try and get them to build, weather it’s a business (industrial or commercial business) or weather they are building residential homes. We're trying to make sure that those incentives are in place. We have also heard from business owners that some of the challenges we have right now is not having enough residents and housing stock to accommodate all the people they would like to hire to build their workforce. So those incentives also contribute to having an expanded housing stock, so the more people we can get to move to Chatham-Kent to run their businesses or to live here, its going to be an ability to share the financial requirements to run our Municipality. Those are some things we are trying to do. Also, we are trying to promote Chatham-Kent as a great place to live and to have people build their businesses and some of that really takes on a marketing of the community and trying to highlight to people what we have to offer. We're both marketing those assets and trying to provide those incentives to make it really attractive for people to come here.        

Environmental sustainability is a priority of Council and two years ago we made a strong push to add some resources in this area, there was one resource included in Community Development and one in Infrastructure and Engineering Services. We have those two positions that are actively supporting the environment. In fact we’re heading up a climate change action plan, that we are working on very closely with the community. It has been paused recently because of COVID-19, but we are strongly moving forward with that.  

On a daily basis from an operational stand point we still continue with all of our waste and recycling, and in particular with recycling we have these resources working to further that development. Within the recycling world there are a number of changes that are going to be occurring over the next year as well. So we actively want to move in the direction that the Province is asking us to support as well. So essentially we have primarily two resources that are pushing the agenda for environmental sustainability. 

The other thing is just overall awareness, not only with the community but every report we have coming to Council we now usually include an environmental sustainability section, so that when Council makes a decision, they have that opportunity to look at that and ask questions. We had intended to also do it in this particular budget but now that has been delayed a year. So next year’s budget will include evaluations of some of the requests and how they relate to environmental sustainability. So overall I would say, very confidently, we are moving the bar forward when it comes to environmental sustainability.

Transit has been a priority for this Council since they were elected. As our contract is coming due, the IES department has been working on a plan and consulting with members of the public and with Council over the last couple of years. Additional items have been coming in right up until last night’s Council meeting. 

Transit is, for the most part, area rated to the areas that use it. As an example, the transit system you see in Chatham is area rated to Chatham residents, it is not in the general rate to all ratepayers.

Currently we are running 3 pilot projects within Chatham-Kent. They have been running all of last year and includes an on-request system that runs in the evening, also a midday interurban run and then a fifth route that is specific for Chatham. In the budget we have included the continuation of these three services as they have been very successful. We recently produced a report that showed prior to Covid-19 these services were increasingly being used throughout Chatham-Kent. This is our recommendation, for the 2021 budget it’s only a cost of about $180,000 to continue with those three services.

At the same time we are also recommending the elimination of one service to help really support the overall budget requirements. And that is the beach bus service that runs on weekends, typically in the summer. There was some very low usage on that particular service which results in savings of about $41,000.

Those are the recommendations in the 2021 budget for Transit.