The Hastings County committee that oversees Community and Human Services is facing a 4.78% budget hike this year.
This is the committee that oversees childcare, affordable housing, social-community housing and social assistance.
At a meeting on Wednesday, the committee heard that six staff positions that were previously given COVID funding have been cut in this year’s budget.
Cost of maintenance for the 1,473 housing units has increased, and average construction costs are up about 12% each year for the last two years.
Director Connor Dorey told the committee that housing projects, such as the 32-unit Quinte West housing complex, are putting the most pressure on this year’s levy.
Facilities Manager Jim Duffin explained, “They were doing a lot of the work to do with touch cleaning, and catch-up on maintenance items, with us seeing higher budgeted operations expenditures.”
Fourteen new capital projects are included in the 2023 budget, estimated at a total value of $19.5 million, with eight more carried over from 2022.
There have been funding constraints that have arisen from the pandemic, which has required 13 projects to be pushed over to the next budget cycle.
Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation came through this year with an additional $4.24 million to be spent over the next three years.
“They fronted that money to us, so it’s already here. We were able to identify some of these capital projects and put them in the budget,” said Duffin.
Portions of that money will be put into about a dozen or so other projects that will be carried forward into 2024 and 2025 as well.
Councillor Garnet Thompson called for a motion to have staff draft a letter to the provincial government and Quinte area mayors to take a look at addressing sufficient funding for housing stock.
Concern was raised by members of the committee on the rising insurance and insurance claims costs in Hastings County at $859,635 and $50,000 respectively.
Tweed mayor Don Degenova said, “I have said it here before that we go after the telephone industry and mobile industry, saying that there is a monopoly. Yet, we’re allowing insurance companies to go ahead and buy up insurance companies so that we’re at a point that there are so few people bidding now that we are all vulnerable.”
