Good morning, Milton!
I want to try something a bit different on this page over the next few weeks. Instead of standard campaign talk, I want to use my professional background in municipal infrastructure asset management to break down the hard data from our recent past.
If we want to understand where our property taxes are heading today, we need to look at the decisions made over the last few years. Today, let’s start with 2022.
At the Regional level, Halton was heavily focused on post-pandemic recovery while protecting its top-tier AAA credit rating. The good news was that Council started looking at creative housing solutions, like directing staff to explore a Vacant Homes Tax. But there was a major warning sign in the data: severe supply chain bottlenecks were already starting to quietly drive up the anticipated costs for major community infrastructure projects.
Locally, the Town of Milton was struggling to maintain basic service levels across a map that was expanding incredibly fast. Our budget was heavily focused on pushing transit into new areas and building roads and parks for massive suburban growth.
While that expansion was exciting, it created a massive hidden catch. Every new road we paved in 2022 is a road we now have to pay to plow, patch, and eventually reconstruct.
Here is the most important data point from that year: because commercial and industrial development didn’t keep pace with new housing, the tax burden shifted heavily onto you. Back in 2001, residents paid 71.8% of the town’s taxes. Because of our unbalanced growth, everyday homeowners are now carrying nearly 84% of the tax burden.
The bottom line is that 2022 set the stage for our current financial challenges. We focused heavily on building new subdivisions, but we quietly stacked up future infrastructure lifecycle costs and put a disproportionate tax burden on everyday families. Growth must pay for growth—but true leadership requires a sustainable, long-term plan to ensure families aren’t priced out of their own community.
Disclaimer: All information presented here is based on publicly available reports from the Town of Milton and Halton Region.