The District of Timiskaming Social Services Administration Board (DTSSAB) passed its 2021 budget at its meeting on February 17, 2021. Board Chair Doug Jelly stated “in 2021, as in every year, the DTSSAB is cognizant of the impact of our budget on our municipal partners. The Pandemic has been particularly hard for municipalities and we worked diligently on maximizing the financial contributions from the senior levels of government to minimize the impact on the municipal budget.”
The overall 2021 DTSSAB budget was $35,313,048 which is a 1.25% increase over 2020. The budget funds the following four programs in the district: Ontario Works ($10,323,965), Children Services ($9,773,958), Housing Services ($7,144,615) and Emergency Medical Services ($8,030,410). The increase in the overall budget is due to a shift in our Emergency Medical Services to 24/7 Supervision that will also help improve response capacity across the District resulting in a 2.0% ($131,274) increase to the municipal apportionment. This year the Board chose to remove funds from our working fund reserve in the amount of $166,100 to reduce the billing impact to municipalities and the unincorporated townships. Once again, we have used our working fund reserve to ensure the overall impact to our municipal partners is 0%.
“This is good news for our municipal partners,” commented Chair Doug Jelly. “The DTSSAB delivers these services on behalf of the district municipalities and we strive to ensure that our operational costs do not exceed the expectations of the municipalities and this year we were able to deliver a 0% increase. We were able to deliver a 0% increase budget to our municipalities despite much higher increases to costs to operate our programs especially with increased costs due to the pandemic.” commented Chair Doug Jelly
The municipal share of the overall budget is $6,702,894 (19.0%), the Territories Without Municipal Representation (TWOMO) contributes $1,774,587 (5.0%), federal/provincial share is $26, 532,567 (75.1%) and contributions from reserves of $303,000 (0.9%) consists of our revenue sources.
The result is eleven municipalities in the district will see a decrease and twelve municipalities will see an increase in their 2021 municipal billing. Of the twelve municipalities seeing an increase only six have an increase greater than 1.0%. The reason for a small number of municipalities seeing a decrease is a combination of assessment increases and/or Ontario Works caseload increase.
“Over the years the Board has kept the municipal apportionment as close to 0.0% as possible despite increases in salary and benefits and operating costs such as hydro and fuel, by using contributions of our reserves. Since 2008 we have used $2,124,100 from our working fund reserves.” noted Mr. Jelly. The Board, which consists of seven appointed municipal representatives and two elected representatives from the territories without municipal representation, bring the viewpoint of the local taxpayer and their municipality to the table and ensures that the budget is fair and responsible in delivering the services that the DTSSAB has been mandated to deliver. Our focus is always maintaining or increasing our services without having a negative impact on our municipalities.
For further information on the budget, please contact Kelly Black at 705-567-9366 ext. 3253 or 705-568-7791.
