Mayoral candidate Susan Stevenson is making a bold financial commitment to London voters ahead of next month’s election, but incumbent Josh Morgan warns her pledge would come back to bite taxpayers. “Under one per cent in 2027 and 2028, with zero as the goal. Inflation or less in 2029 and 2030,” Stevenson pledged during a news conference inside her campaign office on Wednesday morning. Stevenson calculates the cumulative property tax rate increase over the last four years to be 22.5 per cent, “To have a couple of years at under one per cent, or zero, especially when I brought forward motions for 2026 that could have brought this year to close to zero, I’m not uninformed in this space.” The current multi-year budget projects a property tax increase of 4.7 per cent in 2027. Lowering the rate by one percentage point requires finding approximately $9.25 million in savings, new revenue, or one-time dollars. Stevenson is confident that, if elected, she could find the necessary $34.3 million within the budget. She refers to the unexpected need to install boilers in several municipal buildings after Enwave Energy announced it was decommissioning a steam pipe at the end of next month. “I’ll give the example of the Enwave $10 million capital cost that was funded through a budget contingency line that we had no idea even existed. That’s over and above the other contingency reserves and reserve funds that we have,” Stevenson said. “How many other things do we have like that where in a pinch we are able to go for $10 million? So, I just need a couple of $10 million things to meet the goals that I have set. And I have no doubt that I can find them.” Incumbent mayoral candidate Josh Morgan quickly fired back in an interview with CTV News, “Tax promises with absolutely no plan on how to get there, it only pushes the can down the road. It only comes back to bite taxpayers in the butt.” He challenges her description of using reserve funds to resolve the issue created by the steam pipe’s decommissioning. “She’s been on council for four years, and everybody knows there’s an operating budget contingency reserve. Every budget has a contingency reserve because when you plan a four-year budget, you’ve got to have some cushion in that budget to actually deal with things that come up, like the Enwave situation,” Morgan added. Stevenson says during her time as councillor, she hasn’t been provided the detailed departmental budgets needed to find greater savings. As mayor, that would change. Stevenson acknowledges that she was one of the councillors on the Strategic Opportunities Review Working Group (SORWG) at city hall that was disbanded after failing to find significant long-term savings. “We randomly brought things forward, but we didn’t actually get to look at any of the departments and where the pressures were and where there were potential savings,” she explained. “I have to be clear; we have not seen a line-by-line actuals-to-budget during this term of council. So, without seeing that, how are we supposed to find [savings]?” Details of potential budget savings from 2027-2030 would come after she is elected. “The objective is always permanent savings, but we may need to find one-time savings in order to just carry us through. But the commitment is to find savings. And I don’t think Londoners are going to find it hard to believe that we could find some wasteful or duplicative programs or services in the city’s $1.5 billion budget,” she added. Morgan points out that Stevenson currently sits on the Audit Committee at city hall, “We’re very clear on the way we do things. There’s only one member of council who can’t seem to find the budget information that she needs to make decisions. All other members of council have done this for four years in a row.” “We’ve seen this before. It doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable,” Morgan said, alluding to the budget pressures experienced at city hall following Mayor Joe Fontana’s tax freeze pledge from 2010 to 2014. “This is not a transparent promise. This is not something that is sustainable.” “For someone who asks a lot of questions at council, I think Londoners should be asking a lot of questions about what are you going to cut?” he asserted. “This is a leadership issue,” said Stevenson, referencing the mayor’s responsibility to draft the municipal budget each year. “Families need room in their budgets, city hall needs to make room in its own.” Stevenson also pledged to expand the property tax deferral program for qualifying low-income seniors and people with disabilities. Her commitment also includes greater scrutiny of municipal finances. “It’s essential that we provide the oversight and accountability that we’re mandated to do under the Municipal Act. Londoners are watching and seeing. They know we need a Waste and Fraud Hotline. They know that there’s cost overruns on these projects that aren’t being reviewed by their elected officials, and they’re frustrated about it, and they want us to do our job,” she said. A news release by Stevenson’s campaign team clarifies, “The tax pledge applies to the municipal increase from rates after assessment growth. Individual bills may vary; education taxes, water, wastewater and use fees are separate.”
