2025 Draft Budget
Thank you for taking the time to review the 2025 Draft Budget project page for Kingsville.
The 2025 draft budget prioritizes the following:
Stronger Infrastructure: We plan to spend $4.5 million on road reconstruction and resurfacing, $1 million on bridge replacements and rehabilitations, and $280,000 on sidewalk replacements. The budget also includes an increased investment of $450,000 in road and bridge lifecycle reserves to address historical funding deficits.
Investing in Facilities: Many of the Town's facilities are aging and in need of significant investment and repairs. The budget includes $660,000 for repairs and renovations to existing facilities, to ensure they are available for community use for many years to come.
Service Standards: The Town is committed to meeting the service level expectations of our residents. The 2025 budget proposes to address our highest priority areas through 3 new full-time positions in Parks, Drainage and Water services.
Strategic Priorities: Although no final decisions have been made on the future of the school properties, the budget puts the Town in a financial position to respond to this opportunity, if pursued.
Key Challenges
Although inflation has cooled in recent months, many of Town’s operating and capital expenses are still adjusting to the extremely high inflation rates experienced over the past 2 years. For example, the Town’s policing contract is set to increase by $385,000 in 2025.
Draft Budget proposes a $10.00 per month tax increase for the average home*
While keeping taxes low is important, additional funding is required to meet our community's evolving needs and expectations. This budget will allow us to deliver cost-effective services that residents expect while investing in strategic priorities. The draft budget, as proposed, represents an annual increase of $119.66 (or $10.00 per month) for the average household in Kingsville*.
Please review the full 2025 draft budget and ask questions or share your opinion on our open forum.
*Based on MPAC assessment, the average household in Kingsville is assessed at approximately $250,000.
Let's Talk Budget Video Series
There are many processes, plans and pressures the municipality considers when creating a budget. We hope you will take the time to learn more about these and better understand how we arrived at the budget proposed by watching our Let's Talk Budget Video Series.
Let's Talk Budget - What is a Municipal Budget?
Let's Talk Budget - The Relationship Between Property Values and Property Tax
Who's Listening
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Chief Administrative Officer
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Videos
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What is a Municipal Budget? A budget is a plan for money coming in and money going out. Municipalities are required to pass a balanced budget. Your tax bill includes separate tax levies, Municipal, County and Education. The Town of Kingsville only receives $0.54 of each tax dollar you pay. Money comes into the municipality from three sources: property taxes, grants and subsidies and user fees. There are two building blocks of a municipal budget: operating and capital. Operating is for all the day to day expenditures, and just like your bills, ours go up with inflation. Capital is for your major outlays, like new vehicles, renovations, etc. There are many competing priorities for your tax dollars, and Council and Administration always strive to put forward responsible budgets that will meet the short and long-term goals of the community.
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Property taxes are based on the assessed value of a home. If all assessments go up equally, everyone pays the same.
If all assessments do not go up equally, there's a redistribution of the tax.
If the town's cost to provide services increases, the municipality may choose to increase the tax rate. When this happens, everyone pays their share of that increase.
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Kingsville currently has the 2nd lowest property tax rates and lowest combined water and sewer rates in Essex County.
In 2024, the Town raised approximately $24 Million in property taxes
When assessing the health of a municipality, the 3 most important factors are debt, reserves and condition of infrastructure.
To keep infrastructure in state of good repair, responsible Asset Management Planning is key. This requires us to put money aside today, for large expense down the road.
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When creating a municipal budget, there is a balancing act. We need to make sure our revenue matches our expenses, and we ALSO need to ensure a good balance of services provided.
There are a number of External pressures, which the municipality has limited ability to control - like vendor contracts with essential service providers and downloading services from other levels of government.
Internal pressures include ensuring we've set aside enough money for lifecycle funding to ensure sustainability of our infrastructure and other major assets, and expectations for increased service levels. One last point about municipal budgets is that unlike other levels government, there is currently no built-in inflation protection. Since 2021, property value assessments have been frozen, leaving municipalities with no choice but to raise the tax rate just to account for inflation alone.