Toronto proposes 2025 budget with 6.9 per cent property tax hike

Toronto’s proposed 2025 budget includes a 6.9 per cent property tax hike, an increase Mayor Olivia Chow says is necessary to enable critical investments in libraries, police, transit, housing and other services.

 

The budget will deliver “change in Torontonians’ lives today,” Chow told reporters at a city hall press conference Monday morning alongside budget chief Coun. Shelley Carroll to launch this year’s budget process.

 

The mayor said the spending plan would help advance the goal she has been working towards since being elected a year-and-a-half ago of creating a “more affordable, caring and safer city where everyone belongs.”

 

The 6.9 per cent figure includes a new 5.4 per cent hike to residential property tax rates to support Toronto’s $18.8 billion operating budget, plus a 1.5 per cent increase to the city building fund dedicated to capital expenditures for transit and housing.

According to city budget documents, the increase will cost the average homeowner an additional $268.37 a year, based on an average residential assessment value of about $692,000.

 

The hike will generate $251 million in incremental revenue for the city’s operating budget, and $384 million for the city building fund in 2025.

 

Carroll said Toronto is “still recovering from over a decade of underinvestment, which left us vulnerable to face the challenges we face today.” But she said Chow’s administration has made progress toward addressing the city’s financial problems, wrestling this year’s opening budget pressure down to $1.2 billion, from $1.8 billion in 2024.

 

The 2025 budget “continues that journey towards fiscal sustainability,” Carroll said.

 

The planned increase is lower than the 9.5 per cent raise Chow imposed last year in her first budget as mayor. In 2023, under former mayor John Tory, council raised taxes a then-record seven per cent.

 

The spending plan released Monday isn’t final; for the next two weeks it will undergo committee review and public consultations. Under the strong mayor legislation enacted by the Ontario government, the mayor has to formally table her version of the spending plan by Feb. 1. It will go to council on Feb. 11.

 

 

 

 

This article was first reported by The Star