External shocks and legislative design decisions combust in municipal budget deliberations, giving Councils more credit for undesirable situations than they have control over them because the conflicts preceding budget approval are newsworthy and the final decision about how to respond happens in Council chambers.

Though broadly discrediting to municipal institutions and actors, the sequence unfolds in ways that are more damaging to economically disadvantaged areas and more damning for their municipal leadership.

When developers don’t cover the cost of the infrastructure required for new development, municipal Councils have two choices for where to make up the difference: Spend less on services, thereby reducing service levels across the board, or spend the same on services by charging more through other revenue streams: Taxes and fees.

For those that think municipalities’ main financial accountability should be to the people who pay for municipal services, the absorption of administrative capacity to report on provincial programs is alarming.

Here’s how the 350 provincial reports required per year break down by requisitioning Ministry and program.

Like many municipal functions, revenue mobilization is a shared responsibility, with staff and elected leaders each playing a part.

But which part?

Especially when it comes to the overall revenue strategy and harnessing new revenue streams, we've found that there's room for role definition.

Most of the financial studies municipalities commission focus on cost control and most revenue studies are rate-setting studies.

While many observers have stated that COVID re-shone a spotlight on municipalities’ revenue weakness, we look at whether ‘not enough money’ was ever a problem Councils were willing to solve through own-source revenue.

How does the provincial design of municipal institutions play out in local communities, on Council, and to what end?

The article finds that local responses to weak design contribute to sub-optimal financial results.

We often hear that local governments in Canada get just 9 cents of every tax dollar. But how much of that is even a council’s to spend?

One study found that just 9% of a municipality’s annual operating spend flowed from council decisions.*

How local is your local government’s budget?

How municipal staff can leverage alternative revenue methods to do more than balance the budget.

Infrastructure ownership changes and challenges.

Discrepancies between Council’s verbal and financial commitments to capital projects.

Rate-setting and levy presentation refinement.

How to demonstrate the value of municipal services so that residents get an hourly reminder from their own body.

This timeline of changes in local authority to generate revenue, as well as the provincial political parties from which additions and subtractions came, contextualize movements in Ontario municipalities’ actual revenue results, 1990-2020.

An historical lens on municipalities’ current budget pressures, these tables, charts and animations can help you paint a picture fit for the most digital budget on record.

Normal. After health and safety concerns, the most common crisis impulse is to get back to ‘the way it was.’ Including professionally. Let’s distinguish, however between continuing to do something the way you’ve always done it and reverting to it after a break in the status quo.

For treasurers looking to go beyond patching the gaps in policy and procedure exposed by the disruption and re-consider some of the fundamentals whose logic produced the gaps, we have a request for you too: Keep reading.