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Hamilton’s Mayor directs city staff to hold property tax hikes at 4.25%
With Hamilton’s city council heading into 2026 budget preparations, the mayor has set a target for any increase.
“I’ve directed staff to prepare a budget that holds the line. That protects the progress that we’ve made and the services we rely on. I asked them to do the hard work and hold any tax increase to a maximum 4.25 per cent,” Horwath says.
The mayor has issued her 2026 budget directive
With the “4.25 per cent increase”, it calls for city staff to look at “operational efficiencies” and “cost saving measures” as well as “new and expanded revenue streams.”
She’s not talking about staff cuts to save money.
“Am I saying we want staff cuts? That’s not what I’m saying but what I am saying is that we want processes that are effective, that are efficient, that deliver a good quality of service.”
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And she doesn’t want to cut services.
But in a city with aging waterpipes and roads, the mayor says the city has to put money into infrastructure even though Hamiltonians have made it clear affordability is the issue.
“Our city has been forced to deal with real and visible consequences of years of under-investment in critical infrastructure, like roads, transit, water, wastewater, it’s a long list unfortunately,” Horwath says.
Some city councillors CHCH News spoke to today didn’t want to comment on the mayor’s proposal.
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Many hadn’t seen the details yet. but one did tell us 4.25 per cent is still too high. He’s looking for something around two per cent.
“The last three consecutive years have been record high tax increases by the mayor and the majority of this council. So 4.25 per cent frankly is unacceptable. When you add them up that’s over 20 per cent in this term of council,” says Matt Francis, councilor for Ward 5.
A recent city report found that to get the property tax down to 2.5 per cent, would require slashing $83 million from the budget.
McMaster Political Scientist Peter Graefe says even that 4.25 per cent could be difficult to achieve without cutting service, with city staff recently looking at a higher increase.
“I think we’ve seen from the finance department that maybe 6.6 per cent would have been necessary as kind of a status quo measure in terms of the current level of service delivery and staffing, so we’ll see,” Graefe says.
The proposed increase would mean an increase of hundreds of dollars per home on average.
