Property tax hike could hit 16.5% if feds don't step in

City seeks $250M to help pay for refugee claimant shelters

- ALYSHAH HASHAM, BEN SPURR AND DAVID RIDER

This will be a painful year for Toronto taxpayers but one city staff say will leave the city in better shape after years of neglect.

Their proposed historic 10.5-percent property tax increase would require the average homeowner to pay close to $400 more a year, in the midst of an affordability crisis.

But this year’s $17-billion operating budget rollout on Wednesday also comes with a threat from the city’s budget chief aimed squarely at the federal government.

If the city doesn’t receive $250 million in funding from Ottawa to house the growing number of vulnerable refugee claimants arriving in the city, budget chief Shelley Carroll said she’d be proposing an additional six per cent “federal impacts levy” that would bring the total tax hike to 16.5 per cent, about $600 on average.

“That is the potential crisis we face,” Carroll said, ahead of the spending plan being presented to council’s budget committee.

After the budget committee approved the plan, Mayor Olivia Chow would not endorse or reject the 10.5-per-cent property tax hike, or say whether she thought the increase was unaffordable.

Instead, she said she would be listening closely to what Toronto residents have to say in public consultations before releasing her version of the budget on Feb 1.

“We have to fix the things that are broken and the financial mess,” she said, noting the city faced a $1.8billion deficit driven largely by transit and shelter costs, which have skyrocketed since the pandemic.