The Operating budget pays for all the Corporation's day-to-day activities, including salaries and wages, utilities, supplies, fuel, and insurance. Services funded primarily by tax dollars include protective services like the fire rescue services and by-law compliance; operational services like snow removal, street sweeping, pothole and road repair, line painting and building maintenance; maintenance of local parks like Stewart Park, Last Duel Park, and your local neighbourhood park. Then there are community services such as tourism, economic development, community planning, and engineering services and operational costs like administration, legislative services, and human resources. Some services are paid for from property taxes but are supplemented by user fees, including recreation services, like swimming lessons, pick-up hockey, and tours at the Perth Museum.

The Capital Budget identifies the projects approved for infrastructure renewal for that year. Infrastructure renewal of municipal assets like roads, sidewalks, storm drainage, equipment, streetlights, and community facilities, among many others, is critical to residents. Taxes are collected through the operating and utility budgets and transferred to the capital budget. In addition to the transfers from operating budgets, the capital budget is also funded from other sources like grants from senior levels of government, reserves, development charges and sometimes long-term debt.

The Town’s main revenue sources include:

• Taxation and User Fees
• Contributions from other Governments which include payments in lieu of taxes on properties owned by federal or provincial levels of government and grants from provincial and federal levels of government
• Other Revenue which includes fees, service charges, licenses and permits, penalty and interest on taxes, and investment income

The Municipal Act of 2001, which is the governing body for all municipalities in Ontario, does not allow a municipality to run a deficit. Section 290 states:

For each year, a local municipality shall, in the year or the immediately preceding year, prepare and adopt a budget including estimates of all sums required during the year for the purposes of the municipality, including:

• amounts sufficient to pay all debts of the municipality falling due within the year;
• amounts required to be raised for sinking funds or retirement funds; and
• amounts required for any board, commission, or other body. 2001, c. 25, s. 290 (1); 2006, c. 32, Sched. A, s. 120 (1)

Property taxes are calculated using the assessed value of your property and multiplying it by the combined municipal, regional and education tax rates for your class of property.

To understand how your property tax is calculated, watch this short video from Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC).

Your property tax is proportional to the value of your property.

In this example, a small municipality with three properties worth $125,000, $175,000, and $200,000 has services costs of $2,000 that property owners pay through property taxes.

Each property owner in the municipality pays a proportion of that $2,000 based on their property's assessed value. This is calculated by first adding up the value of all three properties for a total of $500,000. Since the cost of services is $2,000, the tax rate is 2,000/500,000 = 0.004 or 0.4%. Therefore:

• The owner of the $125,000 property pays $500.
• The owner of the $175,000 property pays $700.
• The owner of the $200,000 property pays $800.
• The total property tax paid by the three property owners is $2,000.

A user fee is a charge levied upon an individual for the use of a public service. The tax levy supplements a user fee. The user does not bear the full cost of the service, the general tax levy covers a portion of the service. User fees in the Town of Perth include recreation services, like swimming lessons, fitness classes and pick up hockey.

Section 345 of the Municipal Act authorizes a municipality to pass by-laws to impose late payment charges for the non-payment of taxes or any instalment by the due date. All taxes billed during the year that remain unpaid in that year may be subject to penalty charges from the date of default to the date of payment or to the end of the year, whichever comes first. Taxes billed in previous years that remain unpaid are subject to an interest charge from the beginning of the year that taxes went into arrears until the date of payment.

All meetings are open to the public, and take place in Council Chambers at Town Hall (80 Gore Street East). You can also watch the live-stream on our Facebook page.