Mississauga’s proposed 7.2% budget hike, water rate increase & massive 21.3% jump for police could cost homeowners $600 or more

Mississauga’s financial blueprint for the year ahead forecasts a substantial increase on the residential tax bill to fund critical services and maintain aging infrastructure. While more and more residents struggle to stay afloat, property owners face a stiff 8.7 percent hike in total for 2025, when the Region of Peel and City Hall budgets are blended.

The figure would be even higher if not for another year without any increase in the education portion of the property bill, which is not expected to change for 2025.

Despite a proposed overall jump that is about four times higher than the current rate of inflation in the province, the provisional 2025 budget (subject to changes once council members decide what they want to add or deduct) does not include funding for a number of key initiatives, as staff and local elected officials face at least three years of difficult financial decisions while Mississauga continues its rapid urban transformation. 

Council members have already declined a $450 million request from Trillium Health Partners to support the construction of a new much needed hospital, while the infrastructure gap—the number of projects that need investments the City cannot afford—has surged over the past year. 

“We are projecting a $90 million infrastructure gap this year which is significantly higher than last year and really, it's attributed to two key reasons,” Marisa Chiu, Mississauga’s treasurer and head of finance, told reporters during a media briefing earlier this month. “One is inflationary cost increases and the other is the fact that we are increasing the number of our capital programs in terms of the projects we have. With the inflationary impacts as well as significant increases to our capital projects coming up in the next couple of years it is putting additional pressure on the infrastructure gap.”

For 2025, staff are proposing a 7.2 percent increase for the City’s operating budget to help fund $735.2 million in operating costs — a $53.3 million increase from 2024. The overall gross capital budget for 2025 is a proposed $610 million “and includes substantial investments in maintaining the City’s infrastructure in a state of good repair.” The gross Capital budget is covered by what the City describes as a “Transfer From Reserve Funds & Debt Proceeds”. This is a combination of: funds from reserves; development charges paid by builders for infrastructure future residents will need; the continued special levy for infrastructure and debt repayment; financing (debt); and grants from the provincial and federal government for a range of capital projects including new buses, libraries and community centres.

The proposed 7.2 percent increase to the City budget includes the special infrastructure and debt repayment levy. The breakdown of the provisional increase for 2025 is: 1.4 percent to maintain normal operations/service levels; 1.8 percent for new initiatives; 3 percent for the special infrastructure and debt levy; and 1 percent for a critical public fire safety program. 

City officials in the past have voiced concern over the way property tax increases are reported by the media. Residents should understand the distinction between two key figures: a 7.2 percent increase represents the amount the City of Mississauga’s budget will go up in 2025, provisionally, and is the only part of the property tax bill that City staff and Mississauga’s twelve elected council members control/manage on their own; the 2.7 percent figure represents the City’s portion once it is blended with any increase from the Region of Peel and the education portion, into the overall total which combines these three components when the final tax bill is calculated (the education portion, set by the provincial government, has not increased in years).

For Mississauga residential property owners, roughly 37 cents of every tax dollar goes to City Hall; 47 cents goes to the Region of Peel; and 16 cents goes to the Peel District School Board and the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.        

The Region of Peel has recently forecasted that its budget will increase by 12.5 percent in 2025 which, if approved, would represent a 6 percent hike on the blended overall bill for residential taxpayers in Mississauga (who cover a larger portion of the regional budget compared to Brampton and Caledon property owners). Combining the Region’s forecasted increase with the City’s proposed tax increase, and the flat amount for the education portion, Mississauga’s residential property owners are facing a total impact of 8.7 percent extra on their bill for 2025, according to a recent budget presentation. This does not include the separate bill to pay for the water utility, which is not part of the property tax. The Region of Peel is proposing a utility rate increase (the water bill) of 5.9 percent for 2025. These two increases represent $383 extra for a resident whose home is assessed at $581,200. 

Mississauga homeowners would pay roughly $184, on average (using an assessed value of $730,000) more for property taxes next year—up from a $150 increase in 2024. This means a resident in Mississauga with a home assessed at $730,000 will pay about $600 more for property taxes and water in 2025. (It’s unclear why the Region’s average assessed home value is almost $150,000 lower, as market values in Brampton and Caledon are either the same or higher than Mississauga.)

A staggering $250, approximately, would be to cover a 21.3 percent increase for the 2025 Peel Police operating budget for an average homeowner in Mississauga.

Police watch dogs across the country have called on local elected officials to order comprehensive financial audits of forces, to ensure unsustainable police budget increases are not being abused; spent on bad staffing decisions, perks such as personal vehicles for staff, international travel, lavish salaries and benefits and other spending with little accountability, while crime data show the increases are not giving taxpayers good value for their money.

Politicians have long been criticized for refusing to keep police spending in check, failing to protect taxpayers, because they fear the consequences come election time, when they need police support to appear tough on crime.

It remains to be seen if any of Peel’s local elected officials will ask police leaders for financial details to justify the unprecedented increase or call for a sweeping audit to find out if the spending represents value for money on behalf of their constituents who are being asked to hand over more tax dollars. 
 

Peel Police headquarters in Mississauga. The force has requested a 21.3 percent increase to its operating budget in 2025, almost $132 million extra.

(The Pointer file photo)  
 

“This budget at 8.7 percent is totally unpalatable and what we can do is start cutting our stuff and I don’t think that’s fair,” Mayor Carolyn Parrish said on Monday. “Our part of the budget is small, our people that live in the city need the services that we want to provide for them.” She told council one of the concerns she has raised with the Province, as the PCs rearrange the Region of Peel and its services, is to look at the current funding split with the City of Brampton for Peel Police.

“I think our ability to even consider a hospital tax at some point, a levy, depends on what happens with the police services board. If the answer [from the Province] is no then I think we have to take it into our own hands and move motions at the Region (where Mississauga’s council members hold 12 of the 24 seats; the regional chair breaks a tie on Peel Council).” 

While Parrish pointed to the hard-to-fathom 21.3 percent Police budget increase in front of her Mississauga Council colleagues Monday, she said little about the alarming request when it was made by Peel Police’s leaders recently during a Police Services Board meeting, which Parrish attended as a member. The board approved the police budget request as members lauded senior uniform staff including the chief, while Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who also sits on the police board and routinely uses his support for police funding during his political campaigns, suggested an even higher increase. 

At the board meeting when the 21.3 percent police budget request was made, Parrish said, “I have no choice but to support this”. She has since publicly stated she did not support it. This is not captured in the video of the board meeting which includes the chair of the police board saying that none of the members were opposed when the vote on the budget was taken. 

The minutes of the meeting are still not available and the police board has failed to respond to a request by The Pointer for a copy of the vote. Parrish wrote in response to The Pointer Thursday that she did not raise her hand in support and instead abstained from voting, which is recorded as a negative vote, though this is not apparent from the video of the board meeting.  

For 2025 Peel Regional Police have requested a $131.7 million increase in operational funding. If approved, it would bring the total operating budget of the force to $749.4 million, an almost 40 percent increase over two years. The unprecedented 21.3 percent increase for the 2025 police budget has been described as unsustainable by critics who point to numerous funding strategies aimed at preventing crime from happening in the first place (called up-stream policies) that have to be ignored because there is no money left over after handing over such excessive amounts of tax dollars to police departments, with few questions asked.

Mississauga’s own budget proposal includes significant labour cost increases. From the final labour cost in 2023 to the proposed labour cost in 2025, the increase is an alarming 16 percent, from $594,170,000 to $689,230,000 in two years. The City has not done a comprehensive audit to review salaries and benefits, particularly among non-union and higher level management roles, along with a staffing review to ensure taxpayers are not being hit with crippling tax increases, largely to support unnecessary staff levels and excessive salaries, benefits and perks for City Hall employees.

Infrastructure is the other major budget category driving up costs, as detailed in the financial blueprint presented this week.

With $18.5 billion in assets, costs to maintain and build roads, buildings and other features in the rapidly urbanizing municipality are the driver of the City’s infrastructure levy which “continues to be an important source of funding.” The three percent special levy included in each of the 2025 to 2028 budgets will help maintain and build critical infrastructure.

“There continues to be, however, an infrastructure gap; the City’s current funding sources do not allow for full funding of the City’s state-of-good-repair (SGR) needs,” the budget document highlights. Just a few years ago, the City projected that over the next ten years, on average, it would be required to spend $206.6 million annually to maintain and replace existing assets. Now, the latest report shows that $273 million will be spent annually, but $363 million is how much is needed, leaving a $90 million gap, more than double the $44 million reported in 2024.

“We are planning ahead to ensure that we have sufficient funding to cover our commitments for the next ten years and this is why each year we do review the modelling of our capital projects that are planned against the funding that’s available,” Chiu said. “It's dependent as well around provincial and federal funding that’s available for the years but so far, we are within target and this infrastructure gap will hopefully diminish as we continue to proceed with this planning over the next few years.”

The 2025 proposed budget cautions that “Infrastructure continues to be one of the most expensive costs borne by municipalities,” and that “The City’s current funding does not fully fund all capital requirements, but balances the need to maintain City infrastructure, fund new projects as required, and minimize debt.” While funding from upper levels of government is appreciated, these infrastructure programs "[do] not keep up with the increasing challenges the City faces to keep Mississauga’s infrastructure in a state of good repair.”

The latest projections from City staff show Mississauga will need $363 million annually to keep its infrastructure in good working condition.

(City of Mississauga)

In the final months of 2023, when Premier Doug Ford, with Housing Minister Paul Calandra by his side, nixed a full dissolution of Peel and instead revised the provincially appointed Transition Board’s mandate to transfer specific regional services down to the three lower-tier municipalities, Mississauga’s 2024 strategy warned the financial impacts at the time were unknown. Now, the budget document confirms “there are no anticipated budget or staffing increases in Mississauga’s 2025 budget” related to the downloading of planning work currently done at the Region. As for the other areas that might be transferred (waste management, roads and water), “The City will continue to work with the Province on the review of the remaining services while awaiting recommendations from the Transition Board,” which are anticipated to be released in the coming months.

Absent from Mississauga’s proposed financial plan is how the City will fund infrastructure needed to accommodate the 120,000 homes the PCs want built in less than a decade — the same amount Mississauga had planned to build in 30 years — as part of the provincial government’s Bill 23. Previous financial projections have warned the City could lose an estimated $815 to $885 million in development charges for infrastructure over the next decade.

In 2025, 11 of the 24 new initiatives being proposed are either self-funded or will not impact the 2025 property tax. They include investments into bylaw enforcement, additional MiWay service hours, and the opening of a new fire station. The impact of the proposed new initiatives for 2025 is $12.5 million or a 1.8 percent increase on the net operating budget.

(City of Mississauga) 

The proposed 2025 budget includes a substantial increase in funding for Mississauga’s roads: $182.8 million — 30 percent of Mississauga’s capital spending for the year ahead, a drastic increase from $104 million spent in 2024. 

Transit is the next highest area of capital spending: $108.9 million for the year ahead, a decrease from $144.2 million in 2024. Key investments include $33.2 million in buses and $34.1 million in high order transit as the City moves to electrify its fleet after MiWay announced in 2022 it would no longer purchase any new diesel buses as part of its green sustainability initiatives and the ambitious emissions reduction target the City has set.

In 2025 service hours are projected to increase by eight percent (120,483 hours) to meet growing demand for transit service in the city which has seen increases in ridership over the last few years to levels that exceed pre-pandemic numbers. The increase in service hours will require 93 new transit operators, 38 maintenance positions, and 22 other staff in operations, business development, business systems and transit enforcement. Staff are also anticipating a $9 million increase in fare revenue due to increased ridership.

Stormwater is also seeing a substantial increase after the city experienced two ‘100-year’ storms within a month of each other over the summer. In response to growing frustration from residents and the millions in damages caused by the extreme flooding that engulfed large parts of the city, council members finally stepped up, pressuring staff to develop a more robust, expedited plan to improve Mississauga’s stormwater management. While the department received an investment of $33.7 million in capital funding for 2024, spending will be drastically increased, pending approval, to $53.5 million for 2025 to help the City’s response to future storms. 

Staff proposed an increase of $6.4 million as part of the City’s operating budget to support the Basement Flooding Rebate Program, which council approved in September. 

As part of the ongoing Public Safety Fire Program staff have proposed $28.6 million for Mississauga’s Fire and Emergency Services (MFES) to help meet the department’s long-term infrastructure plan to build six fire stations over a 12-year horizon and renovate several other stations after a 2019 Building Condition Audit revealed MFES infrastructure was in a severe state of decay. A key priority for the City’s spending is to decrease emergency response times by investing in new fire station infrastructure. Capital investments laid out in the proposed budget include $21.7 million toward stations and auxiliary buildings and $6.8 million is allotted for vehicles and equipment.

The $21.7 million is part of the cost for two new fire stations and the renovation of five existing stations. 

With budget presentations this week, council members will soon decide if they want to lower Mississauga’s proposed increase while many residents struggle to make ends meet, as the city’s local elected officials also participate in the budget process at the Region of Peel, where the elephant in the room is a massive 21.3 percent hike for the police department. 

(Clarification: The story originally reported the proposed increase in the 2025 budget from the 2024 budget is $55.7 million; due to an adjustment to property assessment values the amended increase is $53.3 million. For every dollar on the property tax bill 37 cents goes to City Hall, not 36 cents.)  

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock 

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