City of Kawartha Lakes residents can expect a slightly smaller property tax hike in 2025, thanks to funding from the Ontario government for provincial policing services.
The province has provided the municipality with $1.4 million in relief funding for services provided by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).
During a special council meeting on November 26, Kawartha Lakes city council adopted Mayor Doug Elmslie’s 2025 budget, which included a tax increase of 6.7 per cent. As a result of the provincial relief funding, the property tax hike will be reduced to 6.2 per cent.
On November 29, the province announced it would be providing over $77 million in financial relief to municipalities to help offset the increased cost of police services provided by the OPP.
The funding is intended to help the 330 predominantly small and rural communities that use OPP services to address budget impacts resulting from the collective bargaining agreement reached between the province and the Ontario Provincial Police Association in July 2024.
Kawartha Lakes has two police services, with the Kawartha Lakes Police Service serving residents of Lindsay and Ops and the Kawartha Lakes OPP serving all other communities in the municipality. Combined city-wide policing costs in the 2025 budget are $21.7 million, an increase of $3.3 million over 2024.
Before the province’s relief funding, Kawartha Lakes would have been billed $9,925,440 for OPP policing services. Combined with the budget for the Kawartha Lakes Police Service, this represented a tax increase of 2.2 per cent.
With an estimated $1,413,283 in financial relief, the new total for OPP services being billed to the municipality in 2025 is $8,512,157, with the combined total tax increase decreasing to 1.7 per cent.
Of the $1.4 million in provincial relief funding, the municipality will return $400,000 to its OPP area rate stabilization reserve for future years, as the relief funding may not be available from the province in 2026.
