Months inside the Town's budgets: what checks out, and what nobody can check

Hawkesbury's total spending is below the median of its peers. Below the median means below the middle of the pack. The comparison covers fourteen similar eastern Ontario municipalities. We sit ninth of the fourteen on spending per household. We sit tenth on the total the Town takes from a household in taxes and fees combined. The problem in five years of books is the make-up of the spending, and whether you can check it.

Three things the public record was missing

The 2026 tax-rate schedule. The by-law that set this year's tax rates passed on May 11. It refers to its Schedule A in four separate clauses. Schedule A is the table with the actual rates on it. That table was not attached to the agenda package. For three and a half months it was not on the Town's website either: the newest rate sheet on the finance page was from 2024. The 2026 sheet finally appeared there at the end of August, a file dated August 26. Your rates existed all summer. The treasurer could produce them.

A single recorded vote. That is a vote where each councillor's name and how they voted go into the record. Six years of the council's own records are public. They hold 404 resolution vote blocks. That is 404 separate votes in the record. Not one of them shows a count of who voted which way. Every one just says Carried, meaning it passed. The entire 2026 budget was adopted in four lines of minutes. This is entirely lawful. The law only requires a recorded vote when a member asks for one. Nobody asks. That does not prove everyone agreed. It only proves the record is silent. So no resident can look up how their own councillor voted on anything.

A budget book written for humans. Hawkesbury publishes 20 pages of spreadsheet. Perth is a smaller town than us. Its mayor's draft budget runs 15 pages, with a written explanation. Russell publishes 48. Casselman publishes 71. The words "staffing complement" never appear once in six years of Hawkesbury agendas and minutes. That is the term for how many people the Town employs. This is a publishing gap, and publishing costs nothing.

Hawkesbury20pages of spreadsheet

Perth15pages, with a written explanation

Russell48pages

Casselman71pages

There is one more, and it comes from the province's own watchdog. In March 2026 the Ontario Ombudsman found that council broke the Municipal Act, the provincial law that sets the rules councils have to follow. Council had gone behind closed doors in December 2024 for a consultants' presentation. The Ombudsman's reason: its discussion "did not fit within the exception." In plain words, the law did not allow that discussion to be held in private. Council did not contest the finding. It voted to put the recommendations in place. Credit for accepting it. The lesson stands: someone from outside has to check the closed-door habit, or the habit grows.

The money picture, in five checkable numbers

The firefighters' negotiated raises are 1.25% and 1.5% a year, below inflation in every known year. Whatever is pushing costs up, it is not the raises of the people who run into burning buildings. Every figure comes from the Town's own adopted budgets and by-laws.

1. Three straight tax increases. Stack them one on top of the other and you get about 19%. 4.93% in 2024, 6.82% in 2025, 6.41% in 2026. The 19% is my own math across the three by-laws.
2. On the same unchanged house, up 20.49% since 2021. For every $100,000 your house is assessed at, the Town's share of the bill went from $1,101.35 to $1,327.02 between 2021 and 2025. Assessed means the value on paper that your tax is figured from. Look up the assessed value on your own tax bill and multiply. Every one of those figures is printed on a Town by-law or rate sheet. This is the Town's share only. The county's share and the school share are separate stories.
3. Where each new dollar went. Take every extra dollar of spending paid for by your taxes, added between 2021 and 2026. 38 cents went to the Town's own fire, dispatch and by-law services. Dispatch is the fire-call centre Hawkesbury runs for other municipalities in the county, under a contract that pays for it. 26 cents went to transportation and the public-works establishment. 2 cents went to the police division. Read those words carefully: the public-works establishment, the crews' wages and the cost of running the department, not more pavement. And the growth in dispatch is matched by money coming in for it, so it does not land on the tax bill.
4. The biggest line grows faster than the tax bill. In the 2026 budget, salaries, wages and benefits rise $1,030,404. The whole tax levy rises $859,442. The levy is the total the Town raises in property taxes for its own budget. I put those two side by side to show the scale, never to blame anyone. Part of that payroll is dispatch work that is matched by money coming in. Part of it is paid by user rates, the separate bills people pay for a service instead of through taxes. So it is not the same dollar. Where does the growth come from? The Town has never published that, and it should.
5. The paving line got $15,000 of tax money in six budgets. Look at the six capital budgets adopted from 2021 to 2026. Capital is the money for building and fixing things. Out of the money raised by taxes, $15,000 went into the line called Road Network Paving. All of it was in 2021. The road projects that did happen were paid by grants, borrowing and the Counties. It is exactly why chasing grants matters so much in my roads plan. It is also why the reserves need watching. Reserves are the Town's savings. The Town's own projection has them down about a third this year.

What the Town gets right, on the record

The Town's grant office performs. It won up to $3.8 million for the water plant filter, and the full amount it asked for on the arena roof. Of the eight municipalities in this county, Hawkesbury receives the most formula grant money per household. Formula grants are the ones handed out by a set formula. We get the most because those formulas are weighted by need. Nobody should tell you we are shortchanged. In the hard years of 2020 and 2021 the Town spent less than its own payroll budget. That is the honest signature of staff leaving. It has landed close to budget since then. The staff have been fair to your money. And the root cause of our high tax rate is our low assessment base. That means our houses are worth less on paper than our neighbours'. No council invented that.

The garage: what closed books cost, in one story

The new municipal garage was estimated at $7.2 million in 2022. Council has since authorized $11.25 million. Every step of that climb was lawful and public. That is exactly my point. The checking was missing, and the record shows where.

Every step of that climb was lawful and public. That is exactly my point.

Estimated$7.2million

2022

Authorized$11.25million

The outgoing council approved the project at its final meeting before the 2022 election. There was no recorded vote. The meeting was public and the documents are on the Town's portal; nothing was hidden. Council never voted on the design contract at all. Staff awarded it without asking for competing bids, using the single-source clause in the purchasing policy. That clause lets the Town hire one firm directly. It was lawful, and staff reported it afterward. Then the firm that drew the plans was also paid to manage the contract and approve the changes. The Town's own report says the extra cost came mainly from design errors and gaps in the engineering. The concrete testing was independent. The design review was not. In four years, no garage decision was taken by a recorded vote. And the 2026 budget still does not say where the last $1.5 million of the project comes from. My question is the taxpayer's question: what pays for it, and when?

I accuse nobody of anything.

Six commitments, and the lever for each one

1. My pen A budget book written for humans. The mayor personally writes the 2027 budget. Mine comes with a plain-language book: what changed, why, what it costs per household, and the staffing picture.
2. My pen Every rate sheet, published, every year. The by-law calls for a tax-rate schedule. It gets attached and posted the same week the by-law is adopted. You should never need a records request to learn your own tax rate.
3. My pen Recorded votes on capital spending, the money that builds things. I will request one on every one of those projects, every time, starting with my own motions. Residents get to look up every hand, including mine.
4. Council vote A public list of the contracts handed out without bids. Credit first: the Town's new purchasing policy, the rules for how it buys things, is genuinely better than the one it replaced. The gap is publication. It allows contracts up to $999,999 without a council vote. It does not require the Town to publish any list of the contracts given straight to one firm, or of the change orders. A change order is a change to a job after the contract is signed. I will bring the motion to publish both on the website, every three months. It takes four votes of seven.
5. My pen A second opinion on every big price. Pricing jobs was my living. Before the Town commits to a major project, the costs get an independent review. And I read the quotes myself. Checking the numbers is free compared to paying twice.
6. My pen An annual report card, in both languages. Once a year, in plain words: what was promised, what was delivered, what it cost, what moved. My roads plan (point 1) and my Main Street plan (point 2) already commit to the same discipline. A resident can read it in ten minutes and check it in an afternoon.

What I cannot promise, and what I will try

I cannot promise the tax levy freezes. Anyone who promises that in a town with our bill for roads, pipes and buildings is selling you something. What I will try for is the next best thing: every dollar of waste found and named, and the books open so you can check the count yourself. I will not call anyone a crook. Nothing in the record supports it, and I only say what the record supports. And I will not pretend recorded votes are required by law today. They are not. That is why making them a habit takes a mayor who asks for them.

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