London is one of the fastest growing cities in the province, and when there are more people, homes and businesses, city services need to be expanded to meet increased demand.
On Tuesday, the Strategic Priority and Policy Committee approved additional funding for various agencies, boards and commissions to meet this demand—funding made possible because city growth also means more property tax revenue.
Assessment growth, which refers to the additional property tax revenue from new or expanded homes and businesses, is crucial for funding municipal services like garbage collection, road maintenance, and even police. For 2025, the City of London is seeing a 1.2 per cent increase in assessment growth, totaling $9.79 million, supplemented by a $7.2 million carryover from the previous year.
(credit: Youtube/CityofLondonOntario)
London’s Assessment Growth Policy ensures the efficient allocation of these funds, with annual business cases submitted to justify funding requests.
One municipal service was notably absent from the list of funding requests: the London Transit Commission—something that caused concern among city councillors, including Councillor Corrine Rahman.
“I was really hoping that we would have seen more on transit,” she said during the meeting. She added, “I have many new subdivisions that are really eager to get some form of transit into the neighbourhoods.”
It is up to the agencies, boards and commissions themselves to submit their business cases to request and justify funding, and the LTC did not submit one. City staff did respond to the councillor’s concern.
“There have been challenges in the past with tying some of the LTC requests specifically to growth,” said Kyle Murray, Director of Financial Planning and Business Support. “But, where there are opportunities, for example, a new route is being added to a new subdivision perhaps that has been recently constructed, that would be an obvious linkage for LTC to pursue assessment growth funding.”
He added that they will continue to engage with LTC annually and encourage them to submit requests in line with the assessment growth policy.
Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis also expressed disappointment at LTC’s lack of funding requests.
“They heard in the budget debate for two years in a row that we were encouraging them to submit for assessment growth,” he said. “And there was no participation in terms of a submission this year.”
Of the business cases that were submitted, the largest request came from the London Police Service (which was recently given an historic $671 million over four years as part of the 2024 multi-year budget). They were approved for about $5.8 million of this year’s assessment growth in order to hire 25 new officers to get the police-to-population ratio up to standard, as well as buy new equipment for their growing force.
All other requests were approved as well, including, but not limited to:
- Parks Maintenance: $166,830
- Housing Stability Services: $197,370
- Garbage Collection and Disposal: $916,016
- Land Ambulance: $1,535,958
All of these funding allocations will still need final approval by council at a later date.
