City council decided on Tuesday that many city user fees will increase in the new year for services like venue rentals and marina fees, among others, while a motion to freeze transit fees at the 2024 level was struck down.
While looking at the proposed user fee increases presented to council, Ward 3 Coun. Angela Caputo asked council to consider maintaining transit fares at the current $3.25 per ride instead of increasing it a quarter to $3.50 beginning on Jan. 1, 2025.
Caputo noted that someone on Ontario Works receives $733 monthly to cover basic needs.
"I realize it is really easy to talk about 25 cents at this table, it's just a quarter. But when you're looking at a basic needs budget, $733 a month, 25 cents can make a big difference,' said Caputo.
Transit is one of the services the city provides that is operated at a deficit.
Once 2024 concludes, city staff estimates transit will have cost $9.2 million more to operate this year than it collects in revenue, with a projected $9.4 million deficit in 2025. In other words, Sault Transit fares are 73-per-cent subsidized by the city and, if they weren't, each ride would cost an estimated $14.70.
Brent Lamming, the city's deputy CAO Community Development and Enterprise Services, noted that at one time the ice use fees for city arenas remained frozen for a number of years, which required a big jump once it was found to have needed to be adjusted.
"If we do not make some of these small increases over the years, it will end up in larger pieces down the road," said Lamming.
Last year, city council voted to increase a single-ride fare from $3.20 to the current $3.25, an increase of 1.5 per cent or a nickel.
The motion to freeze transit fares made by Caputo was supported by Luke Dufour, Lisa Vezeau-Allen and Stephan Kinach, but was ultimately defeated, leading to the 7.79 per cent increase in a transit ride for 2025.
Examples of some other user fees that will increase in the new year: ice rentals for adults will increase from $210 to $215, an adult public swim admission will increase to $5.53 from $5.31 and parking in the downtown area will go from $1.60 an hour to $1.75.
Acting as a delegation on the user fee motion, Mark Brown asked councillors to not approve an increase on any of the user fees because recent city budgets have resulted in millions of dollars of surpluses.
"It means that when this budget is in the surplus, every time you buy a hockey ticket to the Greyhounds, you're paying a little too much. And every time you buy a mausoleum for your loved one, you're paying a little too much. And every time you go to the Rhodes to swim or have swim lessons, you're paying too much. And if you buy a fire permit or a building permit, you're paying too much," Brown told council.
City treasurer Shelley Schell clarified that much of the funds from those surpluses came from vacancy gapping of unfilled positions, unexpected increases in investment returns and a one-time return due to a change in the city's benefits carrier.
"None of these that Mr. Brown has alluded to have caused our surplus at any time," said Schell. "One thing that we can't do is just look at one line item on the budget and make assumptions as to what is happening."
Although user fees did experience a surplus of $2.9 million in 2023, it was mostly derived from additional water revenue through PUC.