With the bill for OPP services skyrocketing in municipalities around Ontario, the provincial government announced on Friday it is offering $77 million to help small and rural municipalities deal with the hikes — which could mean an additional $1 million to the city of Orillia, estimates Mayor Don McIsaac.
“This is exciting news for Orillia. We've yet to quantify the impact, but it's certainly in the neighbourhood of a million dollars,” the mayor told OrilliaMatters.
During recent 2025 budget deliberations, the city’s external service providers, such as the OPP and the County of Simcoe, requested far greater amounts of funding for their services than in years past.
The OPP’s $11.65 million request — a $2.63 million, or 25.4 per cent hike over the previous year — accounted for a full 3.24 per cent of the city’s initially projected 6.94 per cent tax hike.
Since 2022, the OPP had been without a collective agreement with the province, and the hike came with the police service’s new agreement, including rate increases of 4.75 per cent, 4.5 per cent, and 2.75 per cent from 2023 through 2025. As a result, the $11.65 million ask for 2025 also included a 2023 year-end adjustment of $665,000.
While council already whittled the 2025 tax increase to 5.42 per cent during budget discussions (with external service providers making up 5.04 per cent of the hike), the provincial government’s announcement could stand to further reduce residents’ tax bills in the new year, McIsaac said.
On Dec. 9, when the city budget is up for ratification, McIsaac plans to bring back a motion to use $2 million from the city’s general asset management reserve to offset the tax hike, an idea council shot down earlier this month.
“We took nearly $700,000 to cover 2023 back charges. We took that out of the reserve, so there's an argument that we should take this money and pay back the reserve just to put that money back,” the mayor explained.
However, McIsaac hopes to utilize $2 million from the reserve to offset the tax hike, while putting the new provincial funds back into the reserve.
“I am proposing … we revisit the $2 million reserve reduction. This certainly makes it easier, because if we put this money — and if it's a million dollars … then that makes the $2 million decision we have for Dec. 9 much easier to make,” he said.
City council shot down McIsaac’s original pitch, pointing to significant anticipated pressures on city reserves in the coming years, as well as a multitude of capital projects proposed in the city’s ten-year forecast.
