Good morning, Milton!
Let’s continue our look at the real numbers driving our property taxes. Today, let’s talk about 2023. Disclaimer: All of this data is publicly available. I’m just taking the time to read and summarize it for you.
In 2023, the financial strain of our rapid growth hit hard. The Province mandated a massive housing pledge: Halton Region has to build 92,500 new homes by 2031, with the Town of Milton responsible for 21,000 of them.
But here is the hard truth about that kind of rapid expansion: our water and wastewater systems have strict capacity limits. To unlock the capacity needed for all those new subdivisions, Halton Region had to commit to a staggering $5.2 billion water, wastewater, and roads infrastructure program—right as the cost of construction materials was skyrocketing.
Locally, the cracks really started showing. Expanding our footprint so fast meant stretching our local day-to-day services, like snow clearing, road maintenance, and fire protection, thinner than ever.
The result? During the 2023 budget process, Town staff raised a massive red flag. They ran the math and warned Council that just to maintain our basic, existing services into the following year, we were facing a built-in budget pressure equal to an 8.24% property tax increase.
That 8.24% warning wasn’t a worst-case scenario—it was actually an underestimate.
To help survive the 2023 budget, the Town quietly deferred a planned $1.0 million contribution to our infrastructure renewal reserve. They literally put off saving for future repairs just to balance the books for that year. And because the root issues weren’t fixed, that 8.24% warning eventually ballooned into the final, approved 9.88% local tax increase you saw hit your wallets in 2024.
We cannot keep patching over our growth problems with quick fixes, casually stacking up a massive maintenance bill for our kids due to a lack of foresight and long-term vision. Managing multi-billion-dollar infrastructure expansions takes technical, data-driven planning at the Regional table—not just politics.
Disclaimer: All information presented here is based on publicly available reports from the Town of Milton and Halton Region.