With increased service needs, the County of Simcoe is asking the city for a funding hike in 2025 – to the tune of a 1.79 per cent tax increase on the residents of Orillia.
The county provides social housing, Ontario Works, long-term care, children’s/community services, and paramedic services to its municipalities through the annual funds. Its funding request is climbing 13.9 per cent – for a total of $11 million from the City of Orillia – for these services in 2025.
Although the county’s budget is still in the draft stage, county representatives broke down the hike during operating budget deliberations at Orillia City Centre on Monday.
Some of the county’s services saw modest decreases, with the bill for Ontario Works dropping $268,000 to $1.1 million in 2025, due to an anticipated drop in the caseload in Orillia.
“The focus of Ontario Works is actually not employment anymore, but more around life stabilization and improving the wellbeing of those who are most vulnerable who remain on the program,” said Mina Fayez-Bahgat, the county's general manager of social and community services.
“In 2025 the caseload actually is decreasing for the City of Orillia and predominantly increasing in the City of Barrie.”
Increased administrative funding from the province also contributed to reduced costs for the city in 2025.
Other service areas, however, have led to increased funding demands on the city.
Funding for long-term care homes has climbed $179,000 to $1.7 million, with funds contributing to the county’s four long-term care homes – including Trillium Manor in Orillia – and various long-term care services for the homes’ 544 residents.
Paramedic services has climbed $148,000 to $2 million total, with the county adding eight paramedics, a logistics coordinator, and funding vehicle repairs/maintenance, and more.
One new program rolling out for paramedics is a new dispatch software program, which officials say will improve response times for paramedics county-wide.
“It is going live Nov. 14. We've been waiting for this for many, many years,” said Jane Sinclair, the county's general manager of health and emergency services. “It's a much better dispatch program, which will be more accurately dispatching our paramedics, so they will be able to get to those urgent life-threatening calls quicker.”
Funding for social housing is climbing $216,000 in 2025, with the Simcoe County Housing Corporation budget climbing $119,000 to a total of $657,000, and social housing non-profit climbing $97,000 to $1.2 million in the new year.
“The Simcoe County Housing Corporation, this is where we own and operate, as a landlord, our community housing stock that was downloaded by the provincial government in the early 2000s,” said Fayez-Baghat. “We were able to hold two builds in one year, which, obviously there's also an increase in funding.”
The primary culprit for the housing corporation’s funding increase, however, is inflation, said Fayez-Baghat.
“The driver of the … $119,000 operating cost increase is we've introduced a new maintenance and capital facilities strategy that reflects the actual inflation costs,” he said. “In the past, community housing was funded at a 2 per cent inflation rate, which is clearly not meeting the cost of the times.”
During discussion, Coun. David Campbell pointed out the relatively low cost for long-term care when broken down into annual costs per individual.
“The total cost to Orillia is $1.7 million. There are 73 residents (here), so if you divide that's about 23,000 annually per resident, or about $1,900 a month,” he said. “If my math is correct, that's a pretty good price for long-term care. You would not get anywhere near that in a private home.”
Other members of council raised concerns about some county projects, with Coun. Whitney Smith arguing there’s a “display of bongs, cigarettes, and garbage all over the place” at the recently opened rapid rehousing project for youth on West Street near the Orillia Recreation Centre (ORC).
“I drive by that to my office, but right next to that is ORC’s parking lot where children and families (go),” she said.
“What are we doing to prevent youth in that property from doing drugs? And then what's to stop them, if they're smoking marijuana, which is legal, to then using a different drug, a harder drug?” asked the Ward 1 councillor.
“The building’s in really good state of repair. It's clean, it's operated. It's why we fund superintendents and supervisors to maintain that property,” responded Fayez-Baghat.
Fayez-Baghat noted the “idea of a rapid rehousing program is to have on-site case management support all the time,” and mentioned smoking is not allowed indoors at the facility.
“For me, my preference would be nobody does drugs, illicit or not, for their own health … but my service manager role is to ensure that the services are being provided to end up with housing outcomes, and that's what we're seeing in that program," said Fayez-Baghat
“Youth range from the ages of 16 to 26 in that program; they all have different stages in their lives and different challenges, and we're trying to work with those challenges to end their homelessness.”
Budget deliberations continue at Orillia City Centre at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning. Next week, capital budget deliberations will begin. The budget is expected to be ratified in December.
