Good evening everyone and I'd like to call to order the meeting of our finance committee meeting um on Thursday May 28th of 2026. As is our usual practice, we'll start with the land acknowledgement. Grizzy is situated on treaty land. This land is steeped in the rich history of the first nations such as the Hadawender, the Hodenosa and the Inisha, including the Missosagas of the Credit First Nation. There are many First Nations, Matei, and Inuit people from across Turtle Island that live and work in Niagara today. The town of Grcy stands with all indigenous people, past and present, in promoting the wise stewardship of the lands on which we live. The next item on our agenda is to ask our committee members if there are any disclosures of pecuniary or non-puniary interest and if so to please raise your hand and declare. I see none. So we will move on to the approval of the agenda which has been circulated earlier. Might I have a mover and a seconder to approve the agenda? Councelor How and member Scandinavo have seconded. So resolved that the agenda for the May 28th, 2026 finance committee be approved. All in favor by a show of hands, please. And member >> Yes, his name is >> De Mayor. Thank you. So that is carried. We also have the previous minutes with us from April 23rd, 2026. If I could have a mover and a secondary to receive the previous meeting minutes. you can still you are allowed to move it. I asked that once and they said even if we're not here, you're basically just the clerk is responsible for the completeness and accuracy of it and we are allowed to to so move it. I I know it's unusual, but that was how it was explained to me. So, thank you. So, we have councelor How and member Scandinavo who have moved and second it. Um, so the resolution on the floor is resolved that the minutes of the April 23rd, 2026 Finance Committee be received. All in favor by a show of hands, please. And member Deare, thank you. That is carried. We do not have any delegations or presentations this evening nor any consent reports. But at the same time, we also have the finance report 26-15 on our portfolio investments. And with us is Mr. Nick Pulas, our investment advisor with the CIBC. So, um, before we formally ask you, go right ahead. You're welcome to stand at the podium. I just need to have a mover in a second to get finance report 26-15 on our portfolio investments on the floor for discussion. So I'll ask member Deare, would you like to move that? >> I will definitely move. >> Thank you. And member Scandinavo had his hand up to second that. So with all of those formalities out of the way, Mr. Pulas, we're going to ask um you're here to speak about the report. So, we'll ask you to go right ahead. >> That's excellent. And thank you again for having me. It's uh been a couple years since we've been back to have this conversation and I I think it's safe to say that a lot has happened uh in the market over that 2-year period. Uh some things have changed and some things uh continue to evolve and kind of stay the same as well too. So um so tonight really the point of of the conversation and you know kind of highlight for you in this presentation is kind of a both a macro overview of the Canadian economy what's kind of happening internationally as well uh which we know is obviously very topical that's not just domestic issues there's alo also other international geopolitical issues at play that are driving some local pressures as well and then kind of just touch on what we're seeing in the bond market as a whole given the fact that the majority of the investments including you know 100% of investments that are currently in custody, our fixed income or or bonds in nature and thus just kind of giving you an overview of what we're seeing in that space and and how things are positioned moving forward. So, moving forward to the next slide um and the next one after that. So, again, just a really quick overview of our team and I know I've been here beforehand, but just for those that maybe weren't privy to that conversation. So our team at CBC Wood Gunny provides fully customized investment solutions to a variety of of public sector institutions across Ontario and parts of Western Canada as well. Uh currently working with over 95 municipal clients nationwide uh overseeing almost 4 and a.5 billion in public assets. And so um we've been working with the town now for about two and a half three years. And uh during that time frame, it's been, you know, slowly but surely building out a a well diversified portfolio and helping um the town navigate um start moving money out of being in cash and actually now being invested uh in fixed income. Um so moving forward in terms of our team, not a whole lot's changed in that sense. Uh we have made a couple new hires on the team. It's really just kind of strengthened the breath of the team to support our clients. Uh Jake Cranham is a a new a new hireer on our team that's been with the team for a little over a year now and uh another former colleague of mine from CIBC Capital Markets where we worked together years ago and uh a bright addition to the team and someone that's been closely working with a lot of our our public sector clients as well. So, so moving forward in terms of kind of providing the town with a market update, um it's safe to say that and sorry, moving forward again, no, uh that the Canadian economy is is currently facing, you know, a variety of different headwinds both, uh domestically and internationally as well, or as we often call them, the finance community, uh a variety of different speed Trumps, not speed, you know, to a certain extent they're often uh originating south of the border given the volatile policies that tend to, you know, originate from that portion of of of the continent. And so, nevertheless, what we're seeing now is it's not just, you know, it's inflation, trade uncertainty, um, labor and other, you know, local pressures around growth. And now we have a new one that's kind of popped up over the last couple months or so which is really I think for everyone here who you know drove to work today or plans on driving home afterwards has felt that initial pressure in terms of elevated commodity pricing and not just in terms of oil and gas but other commodities around the world uh fertilizer other kind of key exports that originate in that portion of the world and that make their way globally and and what's happened as a as a result. So kind of moving forward and when we look at kind of how things are kind of currently playing out in our view I think you know the the immediate reaction for a lot of people that are kind of seeing things play out is um this could be again this inflationary shock that we're seeing in terms of imp uh increased pricing pressures and kind of how's this going to play out and really to be quite honest no one knows how it's going to play out. I think every day you wake up and you see kind of revised headlines about we're getting closer to maybe a ceasefire or some type of agreement coming into effect. Uh nevertheless, when we look at how things are playing out from our perspective, um we don't view this as being a sustained shock. We view it as being more of a temporary uh increase in pricing pressures, which hopefully shouldn't threaten that long-term inflationary range that the bank looks at. You know, the Bank of Canada has a an inflationary mandate, their mandate when they're setting policies to ensure that inflation stays as close as possible to that 2% target. And so, you know, as a matter of fact, you know, even last month, so we received April CPI data from the Bank of Canada and many were expecting to have a headline number north of 3% actually came in to sub that, right? And some of the underlying kind of core measures were showing that we weren't seeing this spillover, you know, just yet. Now, again, it's early on in, you know, really this whole thing kind of came about in in March and so we're going to see how things kind of play out. that when we fast forward and we look at how we're expecting things to play out, you know, that red line being kind of our latest assumption on where we're kind of assuming the price of oil to be and what we expect, you know, we may get an uptick of, you know, over 3% for a month or two in the spring or early summer, but then eventually we're going to get back to more normalized levels assuming we see a ceasefire, some type of a longerterm agreement come to fruition sooner rather than later. Again, if things do persist, you would see that kind of that upper line, that gray line, which would mean that we get to, you know, calendar year end and, you know, oil is still kind of over $85 a barrel. It could mean that we then have some stickier price pressures and that may require some attention from the Bank of Canada, but at CIBC and from our economics team, that's not the the House view. Moving forward, please. Um and when we you know we think of the Bank of Canada and we think about you know what they just recently encountered just a couple years back right coming out of COVID 2022 uh you saw a supply shock that happened when you had the Russian and Ukraine crisis that originated overseas and that kind of was a you know effectively the kind of a a final nail in the coffin for which was already kind of some inflating price pressures coming out of COVID and then you know here we were a couple years after the fact when CO had come about and you saw some elevated price pressures and so from the Bank of Canada. We understand why, you know, it's it's kind of an, you know, a funny image here, but it it means that, you know, they are fearful of these supply shocks and what could happen if they do persist for long or they don't step in and actually take action. So moving forward, um, you know, I think when we got the monetary policy report from the Bank of Canada in April, what was really interesting, what the market kind of really started to digest was this language around if we started to see things maybe not progress on the trade front, it may be possible we see maybe a cut or two to provide some additional accommodation. But the line that I highlighted in yellow is what came in into that language in that April document. And what was really interesting here was them basically affecting making note of the fact that if they do see this situation persist for longer, they may actually have to step in. And they're talking about consecutive increases to that overnight policy rate if they see a sustained move overseas and what that would do to in terms of inflationary pressures around oil pricing and whatnot. And so moving forward, sorry, what the market kind of digested when they saw that language was, okay, let's see where we are right now. That red line being that Bank of Canada neutral estimate which is kind of the midpoint of that range. So right now we're at two and a quarter in that overnight rate which is highlighted in that gray line. The red line being the neutral rate of 2 and 3/4 means we're just we're slightly below neutral right with neutral being that 2 and a/4 to 3 and a/4 range. Um that being that band the neutral rate being the midpoint. So we're about 2 and 3/4 is the neutral rate. We're currently sitting at 2 and a quarter. That would be viewed as being accommodated polic policy. You know, if you view the neutral rate as being the rate of which the market isn't growing or contracting, it's just kind of existing. With us being at two and a quarter, that's basically allowing the economy to hopefully get, you know, catch its breath and continue to, you know, be a stimulative impact on the economy by having rates slightly lower than neutral. So, there definitely is room to go higher if and when they need to do so moving forward. But I think the really important thing here, and we look at what the market's currently pricing, and again, this is live data. We're getting live pricing from the Bank of Canada in terms of what, you know, the underlying kind of forecasts or projections from the actual market makers in the space that are actually out there, you know, buying and selling futures contracts in terms of interest rates, what they're calling for. And it's really going to be depending upon how they see things playing out. But as of right now, markets are actually expecting for one hike from the Bank of Canada by the end of this calendar year. Um, but not quite a full hike from the Federal Reserve in the US. So this is going to be very dynamic information that's going to be changing daily. We have, you know, GDP data coming out tomorrow, a very important data print for the first quarter. And again, we'll be kind of looking to see how things kind of progress. But this would be kind of a dynamic illustration of what the market is expecting moving forward. And as of right now, they're expecting the Bank of Canada to hike rates by at least 125, you know, one quarter point by between now and the end of the calendar year. So moving forward, um, without spoiling, you know, the ending and what we're calling for, I can say that as of right now, the way things currently stand, CIBC economics is not calling for a hike from the Bank of Canada. And really, it has to do with with this image here. And this is one of the key data points that's driving that that conclusion. And what we're looking at now is this is underlying inflation in Canada prior to the oil shock. And what you can see going to the far right hand side is that we're pretty close that 2% target. And if we go back to where we were in 2022 when you had the Russia invasion of Ukraine, inflation was at a much different spot, right? We were on this upward trajectory where actually the underlying basket of inflation over the four core measures was actually hovering in around four or 5% at the time, not two. So we're starting at a much lower point to where we were back in 2022. And so from our perspective, you know, we're hoping that as long as we can get some type of closure on that event in the next, you know, 3 to 6 months, that hopefully we don't see something happen that we saw a couple years back, but right now it's not the base case. And really, it has to do with where we're starting from a starting point. It's a much lower average compared to where we were when we saw that other supply shock in 2022 moving forward. And labor as well was another key driver because labor when you think of the labor market when you think of price pressures being elevated where things really get that next step and really have a chance to really penetrate the economy much deeper is if we can get those inflationary pressures being passed along into wage increases. And when we look at the labor market in Canada it's much weaker right now from again where we were back in 2022. So the ability of the market to be taking those increased price pressures and actually parlay those into higher wages received much much lower. It's a much weaker labor market. And so again, the combination of a lower starting point in terms of core inflation and a much weaker labor market has us right now believing that as things stay kind of as according to our base case, we're not going to have to see the bank again step in and actually increase rates given the underlying pressures that we're seeing moving forward. Um and again this is you know looking at jobless rates both here and south the border. Again you can see the labor market in the US much stronger than we have here locally. Um and even last week we saw you know an uptick in in in unemployment actually almost at 7% now. We're at 6.9% in Canada on the unemployment moving forward. And we're looking at things in terms of that breakout. We now saw for three consecutive data points over the last 3 months negative you know full-time employment growth. So, three consecutive declines in terms of full-time employment. This was that light blue bar for March, February, and and and January. And what we're seeing in terms of that those data points now being sorry, that was April, March, and and February, my apologies, um being being negative. So, again, we're looking at the the labor market in Canada and the underlying strength of it suggesting that right now we're not that strong. It's at least not as strong as we are south of the border. moving forward. Um, and again, we're looking at, you know, productivity and passing on those higher wages. Again, you know, coming out of COVID, we actually were seeing that where that that red bar was actually higher in Canada than it was in the US. Basically implying that that average unit of labor cost and compensation per hour in Canada was actually increasing. Look at the last past four quarters, which is that last data segment for both the left hand side and the right hand side. We're now actually seeing higher labor growth, higher labor costs in the US compared to Canada. A lot of this has to do with, you know, their AI adoption and the increase in productivity and what we're seeing south of the border. Uh, and that's, you know, we're looking at things here again putting that that lens on saying that given the overall strength of of the labor force in Canada that there most likely should not be a high instance likelihood of them actually be able to pass along these increased price pressures through to higher wages based on what we're seeing here. So moving forward and when we look at household incomes again that would make sense if we're not seeing these higher wages ending up into people's wallets. You're now seeing household incomes weakening more in Canada than they are in the US. And you look at kind of when that that kind of crux was, it was kind of the back end of 24 and early 25 where we started seeing this divergence where our US counterparts were continuing to see their actual household incomes increase whereas ours in real terms were actually now seeing you know average you know individual households now seeing that household income actually now be declining. So again speaking to the underlying weakness now in the Canadian consumer which is now going to flow ultimately into into growth projections as well too. So moving forward when we look at what's around the corn as well too and trust me the bank of Canada is keeping a close eye on this which is again this wave of mortgage renewals that are still upcoming. So you're looking at you know households now having less spending given you know lower wages not being passed along. And what we're seeing as well too is there's still a mountain of mortgages still around the corner. So those that were out there buying homes in 21, you know, that was peak residential, you know, housing in the summer 21, you're coming out of COVID. People are out there buying homes with rates at basically next to nothing. They still haven't had the opportunity to go ahead and renew those mortgages yet. So the bank, again, I know the bank can't go out there and and one to one influence a 5-year bond yield. That's going to be driven more by the market than the actual overnight target rate, which they can control. But again, them having influence on that short-term portion of the bond yield curve, what we're seeing here is they're fully well aware of what's around the corner as well, too. So, they have to again be very cognizant that if they're going to be increasing rates, it has to be a sustained event overseas, which really drives that inflation almost out of the out of their, you know, out of their ability to actually go ahead and control it given where they at currently. So they would actually have to step in because of the fact that it's been sustained for an elevated period of time especially when we consider things like this which are these upcoming upcoming mortgage renewals around the corner. So um moving forward sorry and then when we look at excess supply in Canada versus the excess demand in US output gap is often a metric that's very commonly used. What they're trying to do here is we're looking at growth. You're looking at kind of the ratio of actual production versus potential production from a GDP standpoint in in the local economy. And what you're seeing here is a positive number would mean that you're actually producing more than what underlying economists are projected was possible versus a negative number mean that you're actually producing less than what they projected you were capable of. And so what we're seeing in Canada is this negative output gap or this ex this excess slack. When you hear the Bank of Canada or other kind of talking head economists talking about excess lack in the Canadian economy, they're referring to this image here, which basically says that the Canadian economy, the way it's currently constructed, is actually producing from a GDP standpoint less than what it is actually projected to be producing given the way that it's, I guess, how optimized it would be or its actual ability to actually go ahead and and produce output. And a lot of that may have to do with things south of the border, tariffs, things of that nature. But nevertheless, you can see that from an infl and and so what you have to think about here too from an inflationary standpoint is it's a much more positive higher inflation environment if you're on the upside of zero than if you're if you're in negative territory. And so I think from an inflationary standpoint, counterparts south of the border, they definitely are growing at a much higher rate, a much healthier economy, but also have a much higher risk of sustained inflation versus what we're seeing in Canada, which is the underbelly of the Canadian economy just really isn't that strong from a growth, from a labor, from an outright inflation standpoint. So moving forward, you know, without getting too deep into another one of these headwinds that we had talked about around tariffs and trade policy and whatnot, I think whenever we have conversations with economists, whether it be at C CIBC or other kind of big five schedule one financial institutions, you know, they're often hesitant to really be making, you know, really clear projections on how they see this playing out because whenever you talk to an economist, they say it's hard to go ahead and actually use, you know, economic policy or or you know rational thought process when looking at the situation because really and truly it's it's irrational. There's more of a political underbelly to this decision than it being true X's and O's from a from an an economics point of view. And so our our outright view at CIBC is that again they view that this will be kind of there'll be some some semblance of an agreement struck sometime in the next 3 to 6 months and that it shouldn't carry forward through to through the fall and into the winter time and that we should hopefully get some closure there on at least removing some of that overlying headline risk on what's going to be transpiring south of the border around tariffs and hopefully the situation does not get worse. Our view is that it doesn't get worse. If anything, it's going to kind of be kind of where we are now and may potentially extended to be reviewed again in 2027. But there is hopefully from our base case view is that there should be no more downward pressure on the Canadian economy from additional tariffs or kind of a an escalation from those tariffs. That's our our house view is that things kind of you know kind of remain as is or or improve from where we are currently right now. So uh moving forward it is important though to kind of you know look at how things have been playing out and what we can see here is that you know these sectors that been have that have been exposed to specific tariffs they have been underperforming and we see that here. So that red line here being exports exposed to sector specific tariffs you know if you go back to where we were this time or the spring of of 2025 when these things first came into effect you're seeing that that downward pressure versus other exports not including energy doing a better job of hanging in there. So obviously it is having an impact on the on the economy given what we're seeing on screen. So moving forward um when we look at kind of you know this this whole concept of diversification of trade and looking for other partners to try and you know to part partner up with and and the carne government's been going out there and you know spending more time overseas in Europe and other parts of the world to try and deepen these these trade relationships. What we can see here is that there has been a year-over-year decrease in in US exports and there has been an increase to other countries and moving forward we can kind of get an idea where that is being allocated to um sorry moving forward no my apologies um you know looking at kind of percentage share of where these exports are landing again you're seeing a reduction south of the border with an uptick to you know Europe excluding the UK other parts of you know the developed world as well too China etc trying to diversify those trade partnerships So again, whether it be a leverage player, really just from a diversification standpoint to have other options, other avenues rather than whatever is available to us south of the border. So moving forward, um, when we look at what we're calling for, and again, I kind of hinted at it. We weren't calling for an increase from the Bank of Canada, this is an updated view from our from our economists at CIBC as of just earlier this week, as of May 20 May 26, 2026. They refreshed this house view. I highlighted that top line because when we look at, you know, what the Bank of Canada can actually step in and control. It's that overnight target rate. They have a meeting coming up in a couple weeks on June 10th. Uh our view is that that's not going to be an event that's going to be worthy of any real consideration. They're not going to be going ahead and increasing rates or decreasing rates. Um right now they're still very much in this data dependent mode, waiting to see how things play out overseas. Um and also, you know, there's been ongoing dialogue south of the border around tariffs. So again, we'll see how things kind of play out. Looking for more domestic data, how, you know, what happens tomorrow when we get our GDP print. How does inflation and and labor continue to kind of play out? Because I think from an inflation standpoint, yeah, we saw one print in April and it didn't show any sustained pressure through that kind of larger basket of goods and the headline stayed sub 3%. Let's see how it persists for a couple couple data points, right? I think the Bank of Canada is going to wait and see how things kind of play out over, you know, a 3 or six month data data period to kind of get a better idea around any kind of sustained pressure around inflation. But from our house view at CIBC, it's Bank of Canada on hold, letting things play out, letting, you know, get to some type of closure around tariffs, letting see some closure around what's happening overseas and basically sitting on their hands, letting things play out because of that underlying weakness in labor in the underlying, you know, inflationary basket being much more closer to 2% than 3%. Right around their target, uh, looking at that output gap being negative and the fact that the Canadian economy right now, household incomes, we're not really thriving right now. there isn't really this this worry about things overheating currently and so from their perspective as of way things currently stand there's no rush to the table to be increasing rates so it's on hold at 2 and a quarter for the for the foreseeable future how that impacts the town obviously you know cash that's sitting in your bank account I would say for the foreseeable future kind of anchored in around kind of mid to high 2% and then potentially seeing that rate uptick north of 3% as we see the Bank of Canada increase rates kind of this time and into the fall of next year. So again, our view is that we do see a couple increases, but not as quickly as the market was expecting. The market thought that maybe we'd see, you know, a quarter point increase by the end of this calendar year. House view at CIBC is that that maybe it's a little bit too aggressive. They're probably going to push that out until at least this time next year to get a greater sense of how things are playing out. South the border again on hold potentially going to actually cut rates. So potentially moving in a different direction where we're actually increasing rates while the US is actually going ahead and cutting rates. Um, one thing to kind of keep in mind, we've seen a big decrease in our overnight target rate where the US hasn't come all the way down. There's there's a pretty broad gap in terms of what we're seeing there. So, what we're hoping to see is potentially seeing those those short-term rates kind of get a little bit closer together, which also then potentially hopefully strengthen the currency a little bit as well too. That that interest rate differential between short-term rates in the US, short-term rates in Canada. As that differential tightens in, you may see an uptick in our currency as well too. And that's what we're calling for as well too. So currently sitting at around 138 or 72 cents currently right now. Um now again keeping in mind what's happening overseas. You know whenever you get these geopolitical events happening you get a rush to these safe haven currencies like the US dollar. So that's part of what's impacting that currency currently. But you know we see things playing out where we hopefully would see the Canadian dollar strengthen up over the next you know 12 to 18 months. And a lot of it's going to be, you know, getting some of this risk out of the system as well as hopefully seeing um the rate differential get a little bit tighter in terms of us increasing rates and them actually cutting rates. So moving forward, what we're seeing in terms of the bond market now. So I guess it's kind of interesting, you know, very interesting, you know, way it's playing out right now is when you think about bonds, you think of how they traditionally perform in these kind of riskoff type events, right, which is what we're having right now. We see kind of a war breaking out overseas. Um there typically is this fight to quality, fight to safety where people are out there rushing to buy bonds or selling stocks, buying bonds because, you know, the world's blowing up and they want safety of a of a high quality fixed income investment uh versus, you know, a a higher risk equity investment. But that's not what we're seeing here. And what we're seeing here actually now is, you know, this inflation push that the market is basically baking into the market now is is actually winning out. And so that safety rally that you typically see where bond yields move lower when people are out there rushing to buy bonds in a riskoff event because of the nature of the event being centered around commodity pricing and oil and whatnot. You're actually seeing the opposite happen. And we've seen the yields actually increase now. So we're talking about kind of 5 10 year and longer bond yields actually increasing because of this massive inflationary tax. the market starting to bake into the market because of what we're seeing in terms of, you know, potentially sustained pressures in terms of oil and gas and other commodities being elevated if this thing persists for longer. And so, uh, moving forward, what we're seeing in terms of other types of the bond market here, when we look at the actual corporate bond market, we're looking at credit spread, which is so when we think about rates and we talk about rates and how they're moving, it's often the government of Canada benchmark bond yield. You know, how what does a 10-year government of Canada bond yield look like? But when we're out there buying bank bonds, as an example for the town, for other kind of municipal accounts that are looking to buy these types of investments, there's an all there's also a credit spread component to that purchase. So when you buy a 10-year bank bond, it's going to be that yield that you receive is is is indicative of the underlying benchmark bond. We're 10 where 10-year Canada yields trading. And then there's something called a credit premium or credit spread up and above that. So that additional yield that you receive by buying a Scotia Bank or CIBC bond versus buying a Government of Canada bond, that's known as credit spread. And typically speaking, when we see, you know, equity market weakness or other types of, you know, increased volatility in the market, that premium or that additional risk that you want to receive, you're buying, you know, a bank bond versus buying a government of Canada bond that increases that typically translates into increased yield. And so what we're seeing there, that illustration on the bottom is is that exact, you know, credit spread premium mapped out over kind of the last, you know, let's call it 6 months or so where what we saw here was, you know, that credit premium increase. As the as the equity market sold off, that credit premium increased, but then what we saw is in around March 20th when the market kind of bottomed out, we saw that credit premium tighten back in and get a little bit smaller. All right? And so what we're seeing now is the credit spreads on these bonds. They didn't blow out. They spiked for a little bit, but they kind of have mirrored that move alongside the TSX. So if you look at how the TSX has performed since it bottomed out on March 20th, it's about up about 10%. Over between then and where we are currently right now. And so that move in corporate credit spreads has kind of mirrored that move. And so we like looking at that. And we always say that the bond market is the super deep, very sophisticated market. Um that there aren't really a ton of retail or individuals in there buying bonds. They may be buying stocks, but they're often buying bonds. People that are buying these bonds or large institutional investors buying bonds like the town, other, you know, large pensions, etc. And so what we're seeing here is they're not worried. They think that whatever's happening overseas right now, yeah, there may be a little bit of sustained pressure in terms of inflation. But when it comes to the actual credit quality of the banks of these like high quality AA credits, they're not concerned whatsoever. There's a little bit of credit premium that happened there, but you've seen that move now mirror the equity market and they're back down to where we were pre this Iranian crisis happening, you know, before it had taken part, you know, in in February and March. And so, um, I think from our perspective, that's always nice to see that the that the bond market is reassuring what we're seeing in the equity market. equity market's doing well and that bond market in terms of the additional credit spread is also mirroring that move from a risk tolerance standpoint as well too. Uh the banks have all had earnings this week all came out with really strong earnings as well too. So from our perspective you know I guess I know that's rearward looking and we're looking at how that things kind of play out over time but from our perspective right now from a credit standpoint things look really healthy right now. So uh moving forward um just kind of some summary takeaways to kind of summarize the discussion here. So from our perspective right now, we're not expecting a change from the Bank of Canada. Um right now, even though the the irony is when you look at things right now, you know, if it wasn't for what's happening overseas, the underbelly of the Canadian economy is actually weak enough right now that could actually probably afford a cut, not a hike, a cut, right? Given you look at how, you know, the consumer is performing, how labor is performing, how what CPI is performing in terms of it being really, really close to that 2% target. If it wasn't for what was happening overseas, we may actually be talking about cuts in the bank, not actually hikes. That being said, our view is that as long as things kind of play out according to our base case, which is the Iranian conflict is resolved within the next 3 to 6 months, as well as a go ahead and seeing the tariffs and and all the Trump negotiations around trade kind of, you know, resolving as well too. Our view is that should hopefully give the bank comfort to actually start increasing rates in 2027. But again, the caveat being that we don't see some downward pressure in terms of the the situation overseas persisting for longer andor, you know, trade talks moving sideways or maybe not even, you know, moving forward whatsoever. So, so that kind of gives you a rough idea what we're what we're looking for right now and how things are currently playing out. Again, knowing that things are very fluid, uh, they're often very volatile. You know, I apologize for not giving the the the the uh the PowerPoint ahead of time. I think uh given how things are rapidly changing daily, I think I want to make sure that we had something as as current as possible for you to go ahead and digest. And so um with that, I'll open up for any questions that you may have. So >> thank you. Um I will open it up for any questions from the committee members. >> I have some questions. >> Go ahead. Member Deare. So in the sense that uh I wonder how much in our investment securities uh we have in in in uh in US stocks or Canadian stocks uh because I understand the interest on bonds really good presentation I understand that that's fine and most of the portfolios is in the bond market but the question is how much is in equities is there is an equity component here and how much of it is Canadian equities versus US equities member demare I think we'll first refer you to appendix B would that be appendix B which does show our holdings but excluding the one fund is that correct and and I'll refer this over to um to Tony go ahead >> yeah through the chair uh if you look yeah appendix B it shows our holdings as of the end of 2025 you'll see there about halfway down the page age the one investment equity portfolio uh that's the extent of our equity investments and that relates uh to a Canadian uh Canadian equities uh under our current policy the way it's structured uh that's that's we we we can't um invest in international equities uh Canadian only so it's about a uh 5 to 10% of the overall portfolio Okay, that's that clarifies that it's strictly Canadian. It's not US equities. That's thanks for that. The other question is is the effects we talked about the uh effects of the uh war in Iran and and geopolitical issues in Europe. But is there any expectation to have fluctuation in the bond market from the midterms in USA where the Republicans lose control of the House and the Senate and then a lot of changes occur because of that and of course it'll affect us and of course Canada will get that affect that as well. So there's any any thoughts of that in in your prognosis uh in the next uh 12 months? Um, excellent question. Sorry, through the chair. That's an excellent question. Um, definitely a risk event that we're considering as well too that we're that we're looking at right now. Um, in terms of how we see it playing out in the bond market, potentially not a significant market moving event. We actually don't have 10-year candidas really moving materially higher or lower from where we're currently sitting at right now. So, uh, we've actually already seen such a, you know, a pretty significant uptick in yields that from our perspective here right now, we don't see we see things relatively well anchored where they are currently right now and and that we don't see a material move. Um, from the town's perspective, the bulk of the securities that that are are invested are are relatively shortdated securities with very little interest rate risk attached to them. So, um, again, uh, from our view, we're not worried about that. if there were opportunities like from our perspective right now when we're looking at duration and taking on duration and having conversations with the town and with administration. you know, we're supportive that if if we see situations happening like that where we see an uptick in duration um that doesn't coincide with an increase in the overnight target rate, what I mean by that is the actual steepness of the yield curve, those could be some really attractive opportunities for the town to go ahead and and actually term out from a cash position which is currently earning, you know, sub 3% and potentially locking in, you know, really high quality investments where there's no, you know, consideration around the impairment of the capital. um you may have this ride out some near-term volatility but potentially you know being able to go ahead and secure some really attractive all-in yields at you know 150 200 basis points higher than what they're earning in cash which I think would be you know if that we did see that opportunity I think assuming it makes sense from a liquidity standpoint those would be opportunities we'd be looking to take advantage of and monetize if it made sense to do so >> and if I could just ask an addendum to your answer then so when we look at the portfolio Um, we had a couple that matured early in 2026 in February, March, and April, some $10 million, which I assume you have invested already for us. Um, one, do you, and sorry to put you on the spot with so much detail, but do you know, um, what the maturity dates were on the B on the bonds that you then went into and invested that 10 million with? Yeah. So, um some of those um redemptions were were for cash flow purposes with the Peach King Center expenses coming up and we had yet to issue the debt. So, uh they weren't um all re they weren't reinvested. >> Thank you. Um member Deare, did you have any more questions? Um before I'll recognize member Scandinavo. >> Any further questions? Uh, no. Thanks. I have none. >> Okay. Thank you, member Scandinava. Go ahead. >> Thanks. Uh, I had a couple questions. So, in in the report here, and excuse me if uh if if I shouldn't be asking questions about the report just yet. >> I I think we were just going to finish asking questions of our investment advisor and then move into it. Unless some are related to returns. So, >> yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's related to it is related to returns. So it's I I guess can we maybe elaborate a little bit on um you know the the rules uh governing the investments in Ontario? So regulation 43897 in our town's investment policy. Maybe just like a 30 second synopsis on on on you know the rules governing that. >> Yeah, happy to answer that question. So um effectively speaking what we're looking at here in terms of the pool of available resources or available investments for you to consider outside of what you know what treasure del Monaco had highlighted around one investment and actually owning kind of pure play Canadian equities via kind of effectively a mutual fund type option when it comes to working with an investment advisor like myself and the types of investments we can consider. They're effectively double A low rated bank bonds or provincial bonds or municipal issued bonds or other federally issued bonds as well. So you're looking at effectively fixed income credit. So um what that means effectively is you know we have an an inability to even go out there and buy you know other tripleb rated corporates for example you know belt Canada telis things that are interesting names that you maybe want to own the stock but we are able unable to buy the bond because of not only the actual investment policy that was drafted by the town but even just overarching legislation and what you're able to go ahead and consider for investment. So I would say it's a very restrictive, you know, pool of investments. You're looking at super high quality and I think the reason why is when you look at kind of underlying investment principles. It's really safety and liquidity being paramount and then whatever additional yield can you can earn up and above that, that's often kind of third in terms of that overall hierarchy for most of our clients, right? really when they look at investing money, it's earning a a healthy spread up and above what they'd be earning by effectively doing nothing, which is having that money sitting in cash and earning, you know, a couple hundred basis points, right? So, it's trying to ladder things out, but really from an investment style, it's it's really restrictive in terms of the type of options we can consider. So, >> yeah. So, follow on question to that. Is the restriction just the Ontario regulation or how much more restrictive is our town policy uh in addition to the Ontario legislation? >> So I can comment on that. I So the policy I think was updated I believe was it 2022 is when it was updated recently. So there was an amendment to the municipal act which was that legislation you're referring to 430 43897 I think back in 201819. Uh, and with that, they actually did go ahead and and lower the minimum rating restriction from double A low down to ALO, which would give you potentially the ability to go ahead and consider some other types of investments. That being said, it's not a material increase. So, you going ahead from looking at a double A rated bond to an A rated bond, you're talking about an additional maybe 20 or 30 basis points on a similar tenor issued. So, a 5-year double A rated bond is X. An A-rated AA bond or an A-rated bank bond would yield about 20 or 30 basis points more. So, it's not a material uptick. And so, really, they did it in broaden the the the investment set. It did. Um, that legislation wasn't fully incorporated in the town's policy. We've had conversations and and about potentially looking at adding that and actually broadening the the horizon, but really in terms of materially, you know, increasing the overall return in the portfolio, it wouldn't really have a material uptick in terms of the performance. >> Sorry, one more follow- on question. So, what's the allowance for equities? Is it it can't be zero because we we own this one investment I think it's called. >> Yes. >> So there there outside of this one investment are is there an allowance for equities at all. >> Yeah I can address that. Um not there is there is an option uh but it would require some other basically there's two kind of overarching paths that Ontario municipalities can pursue in terms of investing. you know, money not immediately required. There's the the legal list, which is what the town is currently under. And there's also something called the prudent investor regime, which is a much more broader list of investments that could be considered. Um, under the legal list, there is no minimum amount you can invest in. I think often it's within the risk tolerance of the municipality, right? We have some clients that we either are working with or that we've had conversations with that have a much higher allocation to equities. But if they're going to be buying equities through the legal list, you know, legislative channel, which the town is currently in, the only option to go ahead and do that would be through one investment. So, you would not be able to go ahead and buy equities through someone like myself under the legal list option. Um there could be options through Prudin, but that's a much deeper conversation that I think would warrant a much more serious conversation for the town. So >> yeah, sorry. Um eventually I'm getting somewhere with this. Um I guess the reason why I ask is that you know again if you just compare the the the basic TSX return last year was like 24 25%. I wrote it down somewhere. um actually might even been higher 28, right? Of course, we're not going to put a 100% of our investments in equities. That'd be foolish because we, you know, we use it for cash flow and it needs to be there in times of emergency. But, um, our rate of return was four, right? Just wondering if there's perhaps an opportunity to consider um relooking at the IPS provided legislation allows it to broaden the ability to buy equities to simply you know earn you know to your point earlier yeah it's sitting in bonds which is great it's earning just a little more than inflation right so it's not sitting there making nothing and and you know being worth less it's not just keeping up with inflation, it's earning a bit more. But if there's an opportunity to have it in a portion of the portfolio and something, you know, um that has the ability to grow a bit lower, I mean grow a bit more, I should say, it has the ability to then, you know, effectively lower the tax rate in in in years where investments are are are good or be put into reserves for for other things. So anyways, I think what I'm understanding is that there is the opportunity from a legislative standpoint to potentially uh expand our portfolio to include more inequities, but that would require a thoughtful conversation with council to open and amend the investment policy statement. Okay, sorry that was a long path to a simple question, but thank you. >> And I think just to add to that too and and you know, Treasure Del Monaco had highlighted, I think, you know, the sensitivity from a liquidity standpoint around the PKC renovation and the and the construction project there. And then I think just the heightened need to make sure that the portfolio was as liquid as possible, I think, you know, would also kind of guide those conversations as well just in terms of how that money was deployed. Um, and I think, you know, it's we always say to clients, you know, it hindsight's perfect, right? To look back, I wish I put all my investments in equity and like it's been a phenomenal run, right? But even over long-term historical averages, if you look at more seven to eight high single digits, I think the likelihood of us seeing these, you know, medium to low double digit returns, hey, could it happen? I if I came into last year after the midst of everything that was happening south of the border and said, "Hey, we're going to fast forward a year from now and markets up almost 30%." I would have got laughed out of the room. What are you talking about? The tariffs? someone's happening locally like there's no way. So I I totally understand what you're saying and I think for a lot of times with clients the conversation that that we have always stems around there's always going to be the ability to take risk. It's your willingness and that's the willingness of council, the willingness of administration, the willingness of your own liquidity profile and you know the long-term cash flow forecasting, you know, the abilities of the town to have a clear picture when those dollars are needed. We typically say that when we're buying stocks, you got to be willing to kind of ride through those waves and be invested for 5 to seven years to really fully ride those waves, right? Because it's not always going to be like this. There's going to be times where it's here and maybe it stays there for a little bit and then it comes back. So, I think it's that time horizon, the ability to kind of hold it and have a time horizon that is going to hopefully mirror that time horizon of being invested in equities, right? And um I think it makes a ton of sense. I know we've had conversations and and I and I applaud, you know, administration for even dipping their toe in the water and actually adding it to the portfolio, right? It wasn't that long ago when things are invested pretty much fully in cash and maybe the occasional GIC. So, I always say, you know, we walk before we run and I think, you know, I applaud staff for at least taking that step and and and and exposing the town to those returns and thankfully you're invested for a good portion of it while things are moving higher over the last year, right? So, that's that's a good first step in my opinion. So, So I I think one sort of last follow- on comment would be like I sit on a few investment committees and ultimately the um the division of risk tolerance is b is based on the u the uh I guess the forward-looking outlook need of that cash right you split it up into you know layman's terms a short-term portfolio and a long-term portfolio right you know do you plan on spending the money in the next 5 years if the answer is no then you know um your risk tolerance has the ability to be a bit higher sorry maybe longer than 5 years if you plan on leaving something in there for 10 years, I think your risk tolerance is a little higher and you can also ride those waves and you know over the course of 10 years you start seeing some of those 7 8 9% gains year-over-year right uh which this is all in the benefit of the public right to you know contribute more to reserves to to you know to potentially reduce tax rates but anyways long story short um I think all I'm saying is that perhaps if there's an ability if there's an ability at one point in time to look at the I the the internal IPS and see what the uh council's uh outlook is on on some higher risk tolerances. >> Thank you. Any other questions from committee members? Go ahead, councelor H. >> If I can. Um, sure. I guess I'm surprised that you're looking, you know, crystal balling, you know, 3 to 6 months until there's some relief on this oil situation. Am I correct? >> I I think I think the view is that by the end of the summer, we're in a good spot. Um, but again, no one has a crystal ball there, right? But that I think that's what we're I'm saying 3 to 6 months maybe around tariff news and what's happening south of the border. Basically hopefully saying that maybe by end of the year we've kind of worked our way through what's happening overseas and what's happening south of the border and hopefully getting to the end of the year with hopefully some relief from some of those tensions um and some of those headwinds. Um that's our view. Again we'll see how things play out. You know very well we could wake up on Monday morning come in. I I find this typically happens. you go away for the weekend, you wake up, there's a tweet over on a on a Saturday or Sunday that things are progressing and the market, you know, has factor that in when you when you come in to work on the Monday morning, right? So, I think it's a very fluid conversation. As a matter of fact, I think even on the way in, I think I heard something that there may have been a ceasefire, you know, agreed upon even on the way in driving from Burlington, right? So, um I think it's very very much a fluid situation. Um, but I think when we look at how the market's responding, the market's basically saying, you know, if you look at that 10% run up in equities from that March 20th low, they're basically saying that this is in the rearview mirror. The the market is effectively saying that they don't think this is going to be something that's going to be persisting for longer. And you're seeing that in credit spreads and other kind of risky assets that would be reflective of this longer term risk. They're basically blowing it off saying we think we're going to be okay here and that we have a rough idea that there's going to be an end point in the near future and that we're not going to see elevated oil for long and that there shouldn't see the sustained inflation price pressures lasting for, you know, extended price points, right? So, in terms of monthly data points, so but again, you wouldn't be the first to say that maybe that there is outside tail risk where this could go on for longer. What does that look like? Right? If I can just and I'm kind of tying it into the Ukrainian situation that you know here we we've got oil. It's just a commodity but then we've got the human side of it that it just kind of keeps chugging along, doesn't it? That it people are have become cold to it. But does that help us long term as an investor? you know, you know, if we're going to have a conversation about um increasing the the risk factor and taking a look at it and I think we did anyways. Um but I guess I'm just surprised how they they it kind of works out on the market. Used to be able to guess a little bit but can't guess now. Again, when when it comes to increasing allocation to equities, I'm a firm believer and it just really like like uh member Scandinav said, it really comes down to that time horizon conversation, right? And I think history says that whether it be through com crisis, global financial crisis, co you name it. if you're able to give yourself, you know, 7 to 10 years to sit there and hang around and let things kind of play out more often than not. And again, there's no there's nothing to say that history will kind of be what we've seen moving forward, but that's usually been a pretty good indicator of if you have that long enough time horizon that things do tend to work in your favor. And I think for a lot of municipalities, I think where things get challenging and and being quite candid is, you know, there's an election coming up in the fall and there's change in leadership and things and and capital spend changes and things naturally happen. I think that from working with, you know, municipalities for a number of years, I think that's always been the main hurdle for a lot of our administrative staff that we work really closely with is things are always changing. They're always evolving. And so, right now, it makes sense to go out there and be investing money for 10 years. Then all of a sudden, you know, there's a change in leadership and maybe capital spending change and other things change and all of a sudden now it becomes a a more of a challenging conversation. That's why I think if you're going to do it, you do kind of what you did here, which is you walk before you run. It starts at five or 10 percent and then as things change and risk tolerance improves and you get a clear picture on spending longer term. Then you wake up in five or 10 years and maybe that percentage has increased to a more healthy meaning meaningful amount where you are now seeing you know mid to high singledigit returns because you do have you know a portion invested in other riskier assets right but you know I always say things weren't built in a day and I and I I like I said I really do I applaud administration for taking that first step because it you know it wasn't easy when they were in there adding to that portfolio it wasn't when things were on their way up they're often when they're on their way down you have to kind of hang tight for a bit right so um yeah that that would be my thought on that. So, it's looking through these short-term tailwinds or sorry, headwinds and and looking at, you know, longerterm time horizon and really making sure that it lines up from that standpoint. So, >> yeah, >> thanks. How can you turn your mic off? >> Thank you. >> Question member Deare, go ahead. So, uh, I think I've got some experience with the Ontario Mutuals, uh, who have surpluses similar to what mun municipalities have and, uh, they were locked into doing bonds and not getting into big involvements of of equities. However, the cost kept rising in their operations. So, they needed to find some way to get some additional income. So they approached the uh the province and asked if they could add more uh more equities to their their investments and there was just this was causing a constraint because oh we've always done it this way. We've always had nothing with bonds. So people some people said no that's the way to go and other people said no we need to to look at different ways of having like like uh short-term and long-term investments. So uh in a sense they moved on it and the legislation allowed them it changed to to go into more and more equities and over the last five years they've done very well in uh is what you know the income they're getting from equities versus the slow amount small amount they're getting from bonds. So it's doable if you want to make a change and I think the province would support that as long as you're doing that. So that's something that we can look at. So Scott the question was what is the cost um we're getting bonds most are at four or 5% return but what is the cost of that investment advice that's what's your net return so in the sense that some times you're paying one 2% uh on that so I don't know I'm sure with this volume we have we're probably not paying that we're probably paying a very fraction of that so that's always a concern as well is how much is going uh off for the for the for the advice vice we're getting which is don't make a change. So I just wondered what is actually our our cost um for the advice uh that we're being given. So yeah through the chair um it's uh it's not like it's an assets under management model. It's uh it's based on uh it comes off as part of the transaction cost at time of purchase. Um, but I do know that some of that information is is proprietary. Uh, but uh I don't know if Nick wants to elaborate any any further on that, but >> yeah, I think and thanks to the chair and thanks to uh the treasur delmon. Yeah, some of that information would be prop proprietary in terms of just kind of overarching pricing, you know, metrics and how we go ahead and and and price our our portfolios from a pricing standpoint, but I can say that it's significantly less than the one or 2% that you that you're referencing. and um and that the fees or the the returns that you would see highlighted in in the portfolio in in the appendency that that Treasur Del Monaco had highlighted they would be you know net of of anything that we would have received in terms of compensation for for recommending and and purchasing the investment on behalf of the town. So, >> thank you. know what the gross would be then. >> Sorry, could you just repeat that member de Mayor? >> Then then I know it's we would know what the gross is because your net's showing here. So we would we would know how much it's costing us, but again that's something we don't want to talk about in a in a on camera discussion. So I appreciate that. Um so we'll leave it there on that. Thanks. >> Thank you member to Mayor. Um, I just have a few questions if I could. Um, one, do you envision any changes to our bond portfolio as it is now structured or are you feeling comfortable that this is the position we should be in going forward given the forecasts here of, you know, projections for government bonds and things like that? Could you just um expand upon that? Um, you know, the town's very fortunate that the bulk of the money that's currently invested was deployed at much higher yields than where we're currently at right now. And so given that these investments are all fully liquid investments that have market prices to move up and down as we've seen bond yields move lower as the banks been cutting rates over the last couple years, there's, you know, there's been unrealized gains or there are gains on a fairly significant portion of the portfolio that could potentially be monetized and repositioned. I think from our perspective right now it's you're trying to be opportunistic. You're looking for, you know, moments in time where you see, you know, rates back up and you see maybe inflationary pressures. If you get a little bit of sustained pressure from terms of short-term inflation, you see rates increase, potentially looking to take advantage of that. Also looking at potential, you know, opportunities if we see credit spreads widened out, looking for attractive opportunities there as well, too. But I think whenever we make recommendations, we always are very cognizant of, you know, the town's underlying liquidity needs as well too. So you're not just, you know, investing in a vacuum as per whatever is optimal based on market condition. Really and truly, it's, you know, the risk tolerance and the liquidity needs of the town kind of come first and foremost. So it's having conversations with administration on given liquidity, given how things are currently situated, if there's opportunities, here's kind of what what we'd be looking at. But I think from our perspective right now, specifically because we're seeing an upward sloping yield curve now. We go back to where we were back in 2024, it was like a flatter actually an inverted yield curve where short-term rates are actually yielding more than going out the curve. So now that we see this upward sloping yield curve, there could be some attractive opportunities to go ahead and you know take gains on some bonds that are due in the next year or two and realize those gains and potentially go ahead and term out a little bit and increase that rate of change moving forward while also crystallizing a gain on the existing position. So from our perspective it's it's more minor tweaking than an actual outright regime change or strategy change. So >> thank you. which um does lead to actually the second part of my question which actually may be a question for Mr. Del Monaco as much as anything. So um at the council meeting the other night of course we approved the issuance of a debenture um for close to $20 million there. Um the timing of that though traditionally the region goes out to issue their debentures in the fall. So um I'm envisioning that we'll be receiving the cash in the fall. Um, and let me give you a little more background to my thought process. So, we're conceivably we issue a $20 million debenture in the fall. We get the cash from it. Then, um, it's meant to pay for the Peach King Center, but I think by then we will have paid all the bills for the Peach King Center. So, really this $20 million is going to come back in to replace some bonds that we had to cash in in order to pay the bills. So given that very long background to all of it, um what do we see um in terms of our cash flow needs and you know what do we see in terms of investments then come the fall time with this $20 million? Yeah, this is actually a perfect time to reassess our cash flow needs and just like um members was saying, you know, I think that we're looking to project say 5 10 more years out that would be a perfect opportunity to invest in something a little more equity based. Um and uh yeah, I mean just going back to some other other thoughts that you had there before was, you know, I think at some point we're probably going to have to look at whether it makes sense for us to become a prudent investor municipality. Nick did touch on that. uh that would allow us to invest in international equities which the diversification of that is much more beneficial than relying on just the Canadian market which is a small percentage of the global equity market. You could you know you could have a small market like Canada be you know in a negative or or stagnant position for a long time like you saw with Japan for example like but if you have that international diversification there's a lot less chance of that. That's that's a that's something that we have to really give some thought to because once you become a pre-investor you that that's it we can't revert back and so but I think that is something that is worth um that is worth thinking about going forward long term >> and related to that because in order to be able to do that and figure out what our cash flow needs are and when um I I will say that in my thinking it comes full circle to the need for multi-year budgeting then because really what we're going to have to do is do forecasting out not just of our capital needs but also of our operating needs because we're talking about cash flow here and and so I I not sure where my thoughts are going with this but I guess I just see a more um pressing need to get into multi-year budgeting um because we are sitting in the very fortunate position of having investments and and a not an extravagant amount but a good amount I will say. Um and in order to be able to effectively know what to do with it, we really need to give some thought to where we will be 5 to 10 years out then um and operationally and capital-wise. Could you just add your thoughts to that? >> Certainly. Yeah. No, that's that's a good point. Um, I don't think it necessarily has to depend on multi-year budgeting though because we do have, you know, our 10-year capital plan with our has our expected projects out there. We uh we can make assumptions as it relates to our operating budget which should be relatively stable from year to year. But uh but it's a good point. >> That's it for my questions. Any other questions one last time from the committee members? No. Thank you very much for your presentation this evening. Then um we've taken up a considerable amount of your time and and do thank you for coming out this evening and spending it with us. If the committee members have no further questions and we already have had a mover in a second or to put it on the floor, I guess I'm just going to ask um Mr. Del Monaco, if one last time, is there anything from the report itself on the portfolio investments that you want to point out to the committee members? And and Mr. Pulas, if you'd like to take a seat, by all means, we won't force you to stand there much longer. You've been very kind standing there for almost an hour answering all our questions. Thank you. No, >> I think we covered it well. Um the only thing I would mention is yeah appendix A summarizes the holdings as of the end of the year. Appendix B provides a summary of the investments purchased and redeemed. Um you'll see from the report that interest related to the obligatory reserves is credited back to those reserves. Um that relates to reserves like development charges the um Canada community building fund building department reserves. The remaining interest is then puts towards our annual operations to offset our expenses. Thank you. >> If there are no further questions, then um the motion that is on the floor is resolved that report finance 26-15 on the 2025 portfolio investments dated May 28th, 2026 be received for information. All in favor by a show of hands, please. And member de Mayor whose hand is up. Thank you very much. That motion is carried. Then if I could now move on to the next item on our agenda and Mr. Pulas, thank you so much. We you are more than welcome to leave now. You don't have to uh sit through the other parts of our meeting. Thank you very much for coming out this evening. We're going to now move to um agenda item 8.2, two, which is our finance report 26-16 on our 2025 annual building permit fee report. And I'll turn it over to you, Mr. Del Monaco. >> I do need a mover and seconder. Thank you, clerk. Um, I see two hands up right beside me. You may pick which one is the mover and which one is the seconder. Now, go ahead, Mr. Del Monaco. >> Thank you. Uh, this report is here for information. It's a legislative requirement under the building code act. Uh the building department is a self-funded area. Their fees are designed to cover their expenses so that there's no impact on the tax levy. The total fees collected in the year were $830,915. And there was also a budgeted transfer in from reserves of $438,000 bringing total revenues for the building department to 1.2 million. Total expenses in the year were $887,163 leaving a surplus of $381,782. Now, just to put that 381,000 surplus into context, the 1.2 million in revenue does include that 438,000 transfer from the building department reserve. So, without that reserve transfer in, the building department would have actually experienced a deficit rather than a surplus in the year. And you'll see that um in the building department reserve um beginning and ending balance and transactions that's in the report. You'll see on the bottom of page two there that the building department reserve position declined slightly during the year from 1.973 million to 1.936 million. Thank you. And if I could add to that, when the consultant came to speak to us about um these particular this particular topic when he came to council, I remember him uh saying that a reserve fund balance of about one and a half times the annual operating costs would be considered to be our objective, I I'll say, or the range that we should be in. Um, not that we have any choices under the legislation as to what we do with it, but um, just as sort of guidance as we go forward. Any questions from any of the committee members on this? >> Member Scandinava, >> sorry, I I just had a like a slight maybe presentation question or comment. Uh, and in the appendix the it it makes it seem like there's a budget variance loss of 235,000 because there's that transfer uh under general admin U five like that that the code is 57950 transfers to reserves which was unbudgeted. So it makes it look like there's a big negative variance. I do appreciate the comment you made earlier saying that there was a transfer in from reserves of 438,000 and then a transfer back to reserves of 381. So if there wasn't that transfer in of 438 we would have experienced a loss which I understand but that loss was the tune of let's say 56,000. If you look at that report it gives the the illusion that they did worse. It gives the illusion that they had a they had they had expenses over um they had bud they had actual expenses of 1.2 million over budgeted expenses of 1 1.033 million. It just paints a bit of a negative picture but again that's just more semantics than anything. The report itself is great. I just trying to paint a better picture that's all. Right. And I think that happens because the transfer from reserves is a revenue item. So it's above then the transfers out to the reserves is in the expendit expenditure section. Um and I realize that's probably how our reports print out through our software. Um but if yeah, you almost have to take those two numbers out of there and show them at the bottom and then you get really the the same numbers as Mr. Del Monaco has in his report. Um, councelor, how do I see your hand up? >> Uh, through you, chair. You know, and every year we go through this and it's the cycles. Understand? What if we had a a a chart, you know, a 10-year chart, just to see the movement within that, you know, um that the ins and outs and that it's not an uncommon thing for this particular fund or or this particular um fee, but just just a chart just 10 years and see it and takes weigh a lot of angst. >> Oh, >> could I just clarify? Are you referring to the tenure related to the reserve transactions or or for building activity? >> Just building >> building activity. Okay. Yeah, we can incorporate that into future reports from history. Yeah. And I imagine that you probably are looking at that when you do the budget that you're because of course the biggest number in here is always building permits and so um you know it's not just the average of prior activity but it's also what's in play now and things like that. So it is um from my perspective at least a a number of building permit revenue that is kind of hard to get your h hands under when you're doing the budget because as you can see here you know we expected under the budget it would just be under 500,000 and surprise surprise it came in at 727 uh 727,000 I'm saying u so it yeah I I imagine that staff are looking at that history and also So what's in play to be able to budget for it? But that would be really interesting even even the last five years enough to capture I guess some cyclical um because certainly the building department and development charges those two um I always say go hand inand the development charges and the revenue we collect from that goes up first and then eventually it it morphs into building permits and and the revenue comes there right so it goes in waves and and it would be interesting to see those waves If there are no further questions, then the resolution on the floor is resolve that report finance 26-16, the 2025 annual building permit fee report dated May 28th, 2026 be received for information and that the 2025 annual building permit fee report be made publicly available on the town's website and upon request in accordance with the building code act. All those in favor by show of hands, please. >> Yes. >> And member de Mayare has also confirmed his vote and that is carried. Thank you. And so talking about hand in hand, the next report and the next item on our agenda is finance report 26-17 on a report on our 2025 development charge reserve fund statements. If I could have a mover and a seconder to put it on the floor, please. That would be member Scandinavo and then councelor How. I turn the floor over to you, Mr. Del Monaco. >> Thank you. The development charges act requires uh that this report be brought annually. Um despite a downturn um in the broader construction industry, development charge collections in Grimby were actually the highest that they've been since 2022. Um the beginning balance in the development charge reserves was 8.5 million at the beginning of 2025. We had inflows from collections and interest income of 1.8 million and outflows of 410,000 related to project funding and development charge debt payments related to fire station 2 which resulted in an overall position of 10 million for our development charge reserves as a whole. Appendix A contains the activity details for each development charge reserve and appendix B contains further details on reserve outflows including other funding sources that may have been approved. But for context, I do want to note that this report reflects the current cash balances in the development charge reserves. It does not reflect approved but as as yet unspent commitments against the reserves. Thank you. member Scandinavo, your hand is up. Go ahead. >> Thanks. Um, just out of curiosity on appendix A, I believe it is, um, which is the table that summarizes the total in the reserve by um, uh, by um, I guess subtype, you know, how much is in the fire protection services, how much is in the storm drainage, how much is in the wastewater, and so on and so forth. who comes up with these categories and who in in allocations um and is there flexibility on that? >> Thank you. Um through the chair. So uh the development charge recoverable areas are um determined by the development charges act and then through the development charge background study process we review uh which areas fall under the town's uh needs and um and uh and those are and which projects we have in their future that need to be uh levied for as development charges. Any questions from the other committee members? >> Member how do you want to put your mic on, please? >> No, I'm just kidding. You I'm in trouble now, aren't I? Um, but were you thinking some like with the with titles or names or would it be more understandable cuz something tweaked it? So, >> no, I like when looking at it obviously like there's the basics, right? There's highway related, there's fire protection services, you know, very basic things that you'd expect as development expands, you're going to need more wastewater services, more water services, so on and so forth. But how often do we look at this and see, you know, as the population grows or changes or has different needs, how often do we, you know, um, perhaps take from one category and add to another category or create a whole new category? Like how often is this sort of looked at? Um I I don't see anything out of the ordinary, but um some of the ending balances do raise an eyebrow to me as to as to why they're in in some of the categories they're in. And again, just a sheer curiosity, right? Like I think um again I'd imagine and u I'd imagine that as you indicated earlier there's some legislative need to have some of these in of course but then there's probably some flexibility on others and you know just again uh why these categories and why not others and I'm not suggesting we add or remove categories tonight but how often does the does this get looked at? >> Yeah. Thank you. No, it's a it's a good question. Um we um we do a development charge background study about once every 5 years. We're in the process of doing one currently. Uh and so that's the opportunity to review the town's future capital needs, what projects need to be incorporated into the study, see what impact that has on our development charge rates. That would be the time to see if there's a new category that we're not collecting for. I don't think there's anything that that would be looked at as a new category that we aren't already collecting for. Um but yeah, that's that's the time to review. And then further to your point about the balances and the reserves, that's actually factored into the calculation. If say um we had so many projects going forward in the last few years that required that made a reserve go into a negative balance that that could be that negative balance gets taken into account as okay well we got to get this back up as as into the what's called the quantum of the church. >> Mr. Dr. Del Monaco, I'm going to ask you um to walk this committee through something that um didn't come up at council, but um you and I talked about it um outside of the council meeting, and that was um and I'll ask you to first start by um walking the committee through the column called fire protection services and then where it says less capital debt payments um the 83,560 60 um just to explain how that comes about. That's the first part that I'm going to ask you to walk through. And then the second part is the fact that we have um um approved the debenture of I'll say approximately 20 million of which I believe 9 million is specified to be from the development charges. And in the this particular case, now to piggyback on something member Scandinavo said, when you look under the column of community service, there's there's only 1.6 million. So I I think the fire station 2 is kind of um a good historical example to walk us through. And then if you could walk us through um what will be taking place going forward with the issuance of the deenture and how it um hangs together with our development charge accounts here. Yeah, certainly. Um, so yeah, if we take a look at um at the appendix A, you'll see for example the fire protection services column. That's the second column in. You'll see that it starts by showing the the opening balance in that reserve and then it it shows the inflows in from the development charges collected broken out by the type of development, whether that's residential or non-residential. It then also shows the interest that was um that was brought into that reserve, in this case $10,000 for the year. Uh oh, sorry. The interest was 30,000 for the year. Uh but then you'll see the less the um capital debt payments that the chair was referring to of $83,000. So that's the annual payment um related to the debt that was issued for fire station 2. That $83,000 is that's the growth related component of the debt. There's also a levy component of the debt that is not funded through development charges. that's paid for through the tax base, but this is the growth related component. Um, and so that that then comes out of the reserve. It's been coming out of the reserve for 83,000 each year. Um, and then there were no uh fire related capital projects that had to be funded. And so when you add that all up, you'll see that the the ending balance in the reserve is at 738,000. So as it relates to the Peach King Center um project and the debt that will be issued uh so that will be related to the uh community services category which is on the right hand side of the of the table there you'll see that the opening balance in that reserve was 1.1 million and the ending balance was 1.6 million. So, what's going to be happening once we issue that that um that that debt that 9 million of growth related debt that uh the chair referred to is the annual debt payments for the next 30 years, they're probably estimated to be about 500,000 or so would be coming out of that community service reserve. So, just like the 83,000 in debt for the fire station was coming out, that 500,000 will be coming out of that community service reserve. And like I mentioned earlier, if that causes the reserve to go into a negative balance that is actually allowed under the development charge act, we can continue to do that. That then becomes a factor in each subsequent development charge bylaw that gets updated every 5 years to um so that we are recovering from future growth uh the required amount to be able to to pay off that that debt and other community service related growth projects. Does that answer your question? >> It does. Does that help the committee member sort of to understand the use of it as well? Um, I'll I'll just add on to that because of course um when Mr. Delmato and I were talking about this, I said there's probably three forks in the road that are ahead of us. Um, the one fork in the road. The first one is that um, you know, imagine a scenario and I'm not saying these are I'm not grading the probability. I'm just explaining there are forks in the road that we recover or that we get no development charges in the next while. Well, with 500,000 coming out of this account in about 3 years plus, this account would be drawn down to zero and then conceivably would go negative, which of course um we don't really want to have happen. Um, scenario two is that we collect enough as we go along and we continue to replenish this account. And then scenario three is the one that I I call, you know, we collect bucket loads of development charges, you know, just, you know, tractor trailers full of this and it totally replenishes this plus plus plus. Um and inevitably we will probably be at that second fork in the road. But as the town develops out more and more and as we have um as we go into intensification much more so than just broad-based you know development of vacant land um that's the only way inevitably we are going to finally be able to still collect development charges to pay for some of these things. And I guess in an absolute worst case scenario, which I guess was fork number one, door number one, um, you know, at some point in time, bills have to be paid and it conceivably could switch over to be to being a tax funded, taxpayer funded um, commitment. But we will hope we never have that scenario and that we're in scenario or door number two and three. Um are there any further questions from committee members about this report on the development charges? >> I have one. >> Go ahead. Member de Mayor. >> Uh I was looking at on the report uh presented um it was talking about where this report goes and it goes to council of course and it's also available to the public but it's also going to the minister of municipal affairs and housing upon request. So the question is they request I assume so they have they ever requested it and if so did we send it and what did they do about it just filed it or did they come back to us with anything? >> So thank you through the chair. So they have not requested it. Um if they were then we would provide them uh with the report or access to find the report on our website. I think the other thing to share with all the members is that once our audit is complete, um staff have to complete what's called a financial information uh return and that actually is in a very prescribed format and they upload those numbers directly onto the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing website and that includes flowth through analyses of our development charges and things like that. So I will say they may not be formally requesting our this particular report but in the end they will get a very detailed analysis um through this FIR system of exactly what the transactions are in and out and where we stand in all of this anyway. So, so they do um it is prescribed all municipalities in Ontario have to submit their data into a specific website for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and um and then it's up to them what they do with that information. >> Question is, have they have they done anything with it, you know, in the past? We've never heard from them. They've got the data. It's it's being collected. I assume they're doing some data mining on that, but we've never heard from them and just or other municipalities have not heard from them either. So, it's just going into their data management and they're not saying anything. So, but just interesting if there was any response or what their plans were with that data. I can go back years and years and years and tell you that um after they were submitted um they used to send questions to the various municipalities. There used to be questions that would come to um the treasurer and his staff uh questions about the FIRS. Um I don't know Tony, do you have any more current experience to have you ever had any questions from the ministry? Yeah, I'd say not not directly, but um you know there have been different changes to the development charges legislation over the past few years. So um I would hope they would take municipal numbers into account when making those decisions. Um but um uh you Angela may have some additional comments to that if if if uh if she has um experienced any of that before I arrived. >> Angela, did you want to chime in? >> Sure. Uh thank you through you, the chair. Um historically we've just received inquiries re through the ministry regarding certain um categories that we may have marked and just want looking for clarification or if there wasn't necessarily a tiein. We've never had any specific questions regarding reserves or the reserve funds or clarification on the spend. >> Thank you Angela. I do hear you member de Mayare in that um we do hope the ministry is looking at the aggregate of all the information that they're looking at the municipalities individually and and sort of assessing the financial health of the municipalities but uh we have no further insights I think to share with you on that one >> I I wonder if if the region is also has access because you know they're looking at all the uh municipalities at lower lower level municipalities and seeing how they're doing because obviously it's your concern because it setting the tax rates, right? So, do we know if the region has access to this or they go to the to the uh the uh government to get that information or maybe they don't go through it? >> I can tell you member to mayor that the financial information return is on a very publicly accessible website of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. If you type in municipal financial information returns, you will find them for all the municipalities of Ontario going back years. And there are a lot of schedules in that. So, um please um please be aware of that when you go into it. But that information is totally publicly available to each and every one of us and whoever chooses to lo to um access that part of it. and and in our particular case, I think um in Tony and Angela's case, they probably have special passwords and things like that to be able to um input that data into it, but for the public our ourselves, you know, we're on a read readonly basis, but you can see all of that information on a very public website. >> And that website was getting misspelled. What was it called again? >> I'm going to say it's the financial information return is what you're typing in. Um perhaps u Mr. Del Monaco or our deputy treasurer can can find the exact website and send it out to us in an email or something like that. >> That'd be good. Again, we can all sort of check into it once in a while and just see what everybody else is seeing and how we compare. Maybe. >> Yes, I agree. It's very interesting information as are the um audited financial statements once they're all completed by municipality too. It is interesting to go to the individual municipalities website and read their statements too. Totally. Um, if there are no further questions, then resolve that report finance 26-17 on our 2025 development charge reserve fund statements report dated May 28th, 2026 be received and that the treasurer's annual statement of development reserve funds for 2025 be publicly available on the town's website and upon request. All those in favor by show of hands, please. Member Deare >> has voted as well. Thank you. And that motion is carried. Very last um item on our agenda is 8.4. And if I could have a mover and a seconder to get report finance 26-18 on our key performance indicators on the floor for discussion. Member Scandinavo has so moved and councelor How has put up both hands. Thank you. and we'll turn it over to Mr. Delbonica. >> Thank you. Um, so I've prepared some slides to help explain the report and help you digest it a little better hopefully. If not, call that up please. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Um, so yeah, this is the um the kind of report that I think we can build on as time goes by and use it to see if we're making progress or falling behind in certain areas. And um the written report has uh three appendices. So I'll start with appendix A. Next slide, please. So appendix A is based on data that is compiled and provided to us by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Um this is based on 2024 data and contains comparators with other southern Ontario lower tier municipalities such as ourselves. Uh they break these indicators into two categories, sustainability and flexibility and we score in the lowrisk range in all these indicators. The first indicator at the top of the table there relates to our taxes receivable. Our outstanding taxes receivable were 5.2% in 2024, which was better than the median for southern Ontario municipalities, which was at 7.8. And we recently brought a report to committee showing our 2025 figure, which rose slightly to 5.4%. But still well below our comparators. The next line there, the net financial assets, that's a ratio of financial assets versus financial liabilities. So the higher number the better. We are at 153% which is a good indicator uh better than the comparator average which was 72.7%. As for uh total reserves as a percent of municipal expenses, this is a measure of how much money has been set aside for future needs and contingencies. Our measure is 117.9% versus our peers at 64.7%. So this is a good sign although it isn't my favorite metric um because it doesn't consider the purpose of the reserves. We know that asset management reserves are meant to cover future capital costs not day-to-day expenses. Uh the last one there, the cash ratio measures cash and cash equivalents as a percent of current liabilities and it shows how easily we can cover our upcoming obligations. Our score is 191% which shows we have enough cash and cash equivalents to cover our near-term liabilities almost twice over. The median and average were very different for this measure. The median was 153%. Uh the average was actually 205%. But either way, we're above median and just about at the average of our comparators. Next slide, please. So this is the flexibility indicators. Uh debt service as a percent of total revenues that indicates how much of each dollar raised in revenue is spent on paying down existing debt. A result below 5% is considered low risk by the MMAH and at 1.1% we remain well within the low risk range and below our comparator levels at 2.2%. Now this measure is expected to increase slightly as Peach King Center debt is issued in 2026 but we're still going to remain within the low risk range. The next one there, the closing amortization balance as a percent of total cost of capital assets. uh that indicates how much of our assets life expectancy has been consumed at 33.4%. This indicates that our assets still have about 2/3 of their useful life left on average. Uh this metric has been trending up lately and that's consistent with what we'd expect given the catch-up required on the asset management front. The last one there, annual surplus as a percent of own source revenues. This indicator reflects the municipality's ability to cover operating costs and generate funds for other purposes such as reserves and debt repayment. Results above zero were generally considered low risk. At 17.7% in 2024, we remained in the lowrisk range and were slightly below the median of 20.8. This also isn't one of my favorite metrics because um the reason is is that it can vary widely from year to year. Um but it is a good measure to use for trends and see if you know if we were to start seeing operating deficits year after year that would be something that obviously would need to be addressed. Next slide. So moving on to appendix B. The following information is taken from a consultant report that Ford Erie commissioned related to their asset management plan. And the next several slides are taken from appendix B of that report. and I thought it would be relevant to share given the asset management discussions we've been having. Um, and the consultant did concede that that this information isn't the easiest data to obtain and um may not be entirely comparable apples to apples across municipalities, but I can confirm that our numbers as presented here by the consultant are accurate. So our asset management contribution level relative to the replacement value for our tax supported assets are shown here on the slide. Uh this graph shows the relative level of contributions to reserves for asset management purposes for um again for tax supported assets. So we're putting away 31% of our asset value each year which puts us on the lower end of the spectrum compared to others in the region. When we factor in senior government funding, our contribution rate increases to 0.52%. But that's still about halfway short of where we estimate we need to be to be sustainable long term, which is um 1.2% of our asset value or approximately $9.1 million per year in contributions to reserves. Next slide. This provides an alternate way of looking at our asset management contributions. It shows how much of our tax levy is going towards asset management based on current levels of senior government support. Annual town contributions to reserves of approximately 33% of the net levy or 6.6 million in dollar terms would be sustainable for us long term. Right now we're at 12%. Next slide. We do compare more favorably when it comes to water and wastewater asset management contributions. We are saving into reserves 83% of our asset values each year, which is very close to our sustainable level, which we estimate to be 1% or $4.8 million per year in dollar terms. Next slide, please. And appendix B ends with a look at municipal debt levels across the region. We are on the lower end which indicates that we have more ability to take on debt compared to our regional neighbors. Given the relatively low contribution level to our tax supported asset management reserves, we may need to tap into this debt capacity in the coming years as we address our infrastructure backlog. Next slide. So the report ends with appendix C. So the following data these this slide and the following slides is from a report that's produced annually by a firm known as BMA consulting. Uh it includes data for over 120 Ontario municipalities that make up almost 90% of the provincial population. So this first graph here relates to household income. And you'll see that Grimby's household income of 145,000 is not only second highest in the region, but also higher than average when compared to other Ontario lower tier municipalities that were included in the study. So this provides us with an indication of our community's capacity to pay for services and is a good sign of the overall strength of the local economy. Next slide. When it comes to residential tax rates, Ginsby has the second lowest tax rates in the region at 1.15%. Now, what this refers to is the combined municipal tax rate, town plus region, but excluding education. So, for every $100,000 of property assessment, residents pay 1.15% or $1,150 in municipal taxes. That puts us right about at the provincial average. Um, and for some additional context, only 34 of that 1.15% relates to town taxes that we have control over. The other 8.1 relates to regional taxes. Next slide. On the industrial side of things, we're also second lowest in the region with a 3% industrial tax rate. However, we are higher than industrial rates across the province, as are all other Niagara region municipalities. And again, of the 3%, uh the town tax rate makes up only 89 of that. Next slide. Looking at our assessment base, 89% of our assessment is residential with 8% being commercial and 1% industrial. Only 2% is considered farmland. Next slide. By comparison, across the region, assessment is very similar in terms of commercial and industrial. 8% commercial and 2% industrial across the region. Where things differ is residential and farmland across the region. Residential makes up only 82% because farmland makes up a larger portion of the assessment at 6%. Next slide. If we were to zoom out even further across the province as a whole, again, industrial and commercial remain at those 8% and 2% levels, but with farmland making up 11% of the assessment. residential becomes smaller and at um only at 77% I know it's hard to read there but at 77% of the assessment. So that's that's my last slide here. Um just to conclude as I said I I think this is something we can continue to build on over time and see if we're making progress and where we're falling back in certain areas. But I think it's a very positive sign and many good indicators that uh show Grimby in a very good light. Thank you. >> Committee members, any questions? Councelor How? Go ahead. >> Um through your chair, can we get this emailed to us or something in a package? Praphs much easier for me to understand than words. >> Yes, sir. >> I'm going to say, would you like it hard copy printed? That's the only way you'll get color. >> Large print. >> In large print. >> Any other questions from committee members? Members Candonava, go ahead. >> Maybe just a comment. That was excellent. Thanks for the slide deck. Uh made it a lot easier to digest. Um, again, we we we always bubble up and bump around and talk about the fact that we're not contributing enough to reserves to replace our capital assets. Um, I guess the challenge with making it a priority is that replacing capital assets is generally something that help happens over um decades rather than, you know, within a year. So, uh, it's good to see that we keep putting it on the forefront of issues so that it's not forgotten. Um and and earlier on when we were speaking about our investment our investment policy statement sort of what I was referring to is that if there's a potential to um if if if there's a potential to um broaden the scope of what we're able to invest in over longer time horizons. Perhaps that's an opportunity to use returns on funds that are otherwise sitting idle to help bridge that gap rather than via tax levy. But uh again, that was a great report, great visual representation of of that and also there was many positives taken away from it. So thank you very much. >> Any further questions or comments? >> I have one. >> Go ahead. Hambridge mayor. >> Uh yes, this is an excellent report. Uh it's moving us to sort of like giving us a a report card uh for the various municipalities in the region. Um that we all can use to s check our progress in moving into a more positive situation for the taxpayers. um but also gives uh the region I would think something to look at as well to see okay who's doing what and what the effect their tax increases are affecting the mun uh the municipalities below them. So, I think this is a great start to give us the uh the idea of a report card on annual basis to see where where we're going. And obviously the the uh consultant that was doing this for for for had access to the information somewhere. So, he's he's pulled that information together. So, this is great to have data going out to everybody to look at it and compare each other. So, again, great board and thanks for that. Thank you, member de Mayare. For those who are interested, if you go to the region of Niagara website, and I just quickly went there, and you look under government and budget taxes, there is a place there to calculate your property taxes. And you put in your city or town, you put in your assessed value, and it actually comes up with a calculation. A number of months ago, I went in and ran this report for um 2025 for um a number of municipalities in the Niagara region. And um I can truly say that um this calculator is accurate almost to the penny because it matched my property tax bill that accurately. And um so to start with very reliable calculator but secondly it was really interesting to put in the various municipalities with that same assessment that I was looking up which was my own home and then to see and I can say that you know what I saw printed here is mirrored in the report Mr. Del Monaco put together that Niagara on the Lake um for example has were sort of comparable to. Um and I was absolutely astonished when I put in some of the other municipalities who have big commercial and industrial um assessment bases but how high the property taxes were. um really really I I I would that's all I can say I was absolutely astonished by the size of the number of what the property taxes would be. So um just something if you're curious to see exactly what your home would be and what your property taxes would be if you were in other municipalities. Um feel free to uh run your own calculations here. I think the um yeah I I have to say you know when we um start doing comparators like this it is so interesting to see those numbers proved out and so um thank you very much for doing that. Um I I guess I always then say and and some of you are used to this. It's like okay what next? What next steps? Right. Um and one of the things that um I'd like to put on the table for and ask for my fellow committee members thoughts are is these KPIs are done at a very high level by municipality and comparing to other municipalities. But I believe there are KPIs even through the FIR returns and so on. um that dive into things in a deeper basis, things like um public works and community services and so on. And um and so I guess my question is, you know, would that be useful information either that the departments themselves need or ultimately that this committee may ultimately need? and and I'm really talking about the future because we only have one committee meeting left and that's in June. But interested in everybody's thoughts about, you know, KPIs, more detailed KPIs and, you know, how we can use them to improve the municipality. So, I'll put that on the floor. Um, I I've never thought of having comparable data as a bad thing, right? It's it's it's always great to benchmark yourselves against others that um are in a same or similar situation, you know? Uh so I I would, you know, again, provided that it's not a massive lift to uh to provide some of this data, I think it would be great. I honestly do. I I can't see a reason why we shouldn't be benchmarking ourselves in as many categories as possible or reasonable to do so. >> Other committee members thoughts? >> I think it's a great good idea to benchmark ourselves against other municipalities. It's also a good idea to benchmark ourselves against the region because that's a big hunk of our tax dollars to see what we can find out about what they're doing and how they're doing how they're doing it. So, I don't know if that's possible. I don't know if that information is available. But if we start down the road of of checking uh other municipalities, we should also check the region to see where we are, where we can improve and where they need to improve. So, we have some actual the hard datas to go to them and say stop doing this and do more of this. So that's I think was the future is getting everybody in the same boat as it were and sort of moving in the same direction. So I think this is a good start from that point of view. Thanks >> member Dearra. I will um although I will by and large echo those thoughts um upper tier municipalities sometimes um offer similar services to what we do um and I'll say things like roads you know they have winter control of roads they um um but then when it comes to things like water and wastewater they are the the water treatment plant they are the I'll say the wholesaler and we the retailers. So, we start comparing things and and it and we're not really offering the exact same service, right? Whereas with the lower tier municipalities, most of us are offering those very same services. Um so that you know, Lincoln and Pelum and you know, they all have um the exact same services that we offer. So, it becomes um more useful information to compare to them. um it becomes a little harder when we go to the region. They're the ones offering um long-term care homes and they're in charge of our um you know uh I'll say social services like welfare and on and on and so it becomes a little harder to actually um make those KPIs comparable. I'm sure if there's um on on a high level obviously they have things like debt, they have uh reserves and so on and so forth and so it is um at a very high level it is possible to compare to them but I don't know once we get into the nitty-gritty details how how comparable they would or how useful that information would really be but um but certainly some of their information would be very very interesting to compare to as well. Um just to um just a couple observations as we were getting into the report because of course I was reading it um earlier as well and um the city of Thorald often comes up and often comes up you know as doing even better than we um we are in terms of their statistics and it's my understanding that they have no financial debt no debt at all um and therefore they have no u uh principal and interest payments on debt like we do. Um, a very long time ago, I believe they sold their locallyowned hydro. They took that money and invested it into a community um, hub, which I will say would be comparable to our Peach King Center as what we just did. And that was how they invested the proceeds from that. Um so just some when when you start to look at some of these municipalities you actually um kind of have to know a bit of the history of how they ended up there and why they are there. Um but it is really interesting to follow that um some of those municipalities um Tony had mentioned it um earlier have a significant amount of farmland within their within their geographical boundaries and farmland pays a tax rate that's about a quarter of what the residential rate is. So um lovely as the farmland is essential as it is it doesn't help pay the bills very far if you're a municipality. um you know you're better off to have industrial and commercial or a lot or a lot of residential. So each of the the municipalities in our chart and each of our comparators is unique unique in its own way either because of its geography or um you know things that have happened in the past and the choices that they make. But it is still really interesting information to be able to compare to all our neighbors for sure. One last call. Any questions from the committee members or comments? If not, then the motion on the floor is resolved that report finance 26-18 key performance indicators dated May 28th, 2026 be received for information. All in favor, please. And that is carried. Thank you. Item nine on our agenda is correspondence, and we have none this evening. the next meeting of our finance committee scheduled for June 25th at 6 PM and all of you will be hearing from our clerk prior to that as a reminder that um he will be looking for comments from each of you. I know I have the whip out on your behalf, Noah. Looking for comments from all of you uh for a final report on, you know, I'll call it I won't call it the good and the bad and the ugly. That's not what it's meant to be. It's meant to be about the positives of things we accomplished and uh future opportunities for the role that finance plays in all of this. So, um uh Noah had our clerk has promised me he's going to send out reminders and so uh you will be hearing from him uh by June 15th. We'd like your feedback and in order to put the report together for June 25th and you'll see the the draft of the report and be able to uh comment at that time. If we have no other new business, then our meeting is adjourned. Thank you.