County of Brant Council adopted a financing strategy for its Asset Management Plan during its regular council meeting on Tuesday, July 22, 2025.
Over the past two years, Council has adopted asset management plans for both core, and non-core infrastructure. Both include an inventory and condition estimates, replacement costs, life cycles and maintenance milestones for all County assets (something the corporation owns and takes care of) and infrastructure items.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Byron Tan, a manager from Watson and Associates Economists Ltd., presented a financing strategy based on the 2024 Asset Management Plan (prepared by R.J. Burnside and Associates Ltd.) to Council.
“The asset management plan and financing strategy provide a framework to ensure that the County’s assets and infrastructure are maintained to an appropriate standard and replaced in an orderly fashion, as needed to maintain quality and reliable services to the community,” said Heather Boyd, the County’s General Manager of Corporate Services.
The proposed financing strategy doesn’t commit budget funds to asset projects, but instead, sets a goal to achieve full funding for the replacement of the County’s assets based on their project life cycles, and as it aligns with its Long Term Financial Plan.
According to Tan, the total replacement cost for the County’s infrastructure assets is estimated to be approximately $2.8 billion.
Currently, roads account for the largest share of replacement costs at 49 per cent (or $1.38 billion), followed by bridges and culverts at 14 per cent ($384 million), wastewater at 10 per cent ($287 million) water at 10 per cent ($284 million) and all the other assets such as trails and park, roadway assets, storm water, non-core assets like facilities, and other non-core assets make up the last 17 per cent ($302 million).
Tan explained that in order to comply with O. Reg. 588/17, which states that municipalities are required to develop a minimum ten-year capital plan that forecasts the costs of implementing the lifecycle management strategies, that was how he laid out the financial strategy for the County.
“An annual lifecycle funding target represents the amount of funding that would be required annually to fully finance a lifecycle management strategy over the long term,” read Tan’s report. “By planning to achieve this annual funding level, the County would theoretically be able to fully fund capital works as they arise.”
Tan explained that in order to help pay for future tax-supported asset projects for things like as roads, bridges and culverts, trails, roadway assets, storm water, parks, facilities, vehicles, solid waste sites, emergency services equipment and IT and solar equipment, the County would have to annually put away approximately $38.4 million for the next ten years.
He also said that in order to help pay for rate-supported asset projects for things like water and wastewater, the County would need to annually put away approximately $9.8 million for the next ten years.
“Based on your long term financial plan, as well as what we’ve undertaken for this asset management strategy, we have identified about $30 million that could go towards [tax-based] asset management items. …With what you have available as its relative to the funding gap for the tax supported side, it’s about an $8.4 million difference,” Tan told Council. “On the rate-supported side, we have about $5.7 million that we’ve identified through the capital funding budget. …Keeping in mind that there’s a $9.8 million annual life cycle amount target, that translates to a $4.1 million funding gap.”
Tan’s report went on to say that there were a few things to that could be done to make up for the gap with the tax-based assets, including accessing funding from the Canada Community-Building Fund, the Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund, and increasing the County’s tax levy anywhere from 4.4 to 6.1 per cent from 2026 to 2034.
The report does say that if other funding sources become available, or if staff can implement certain maintenance practices that defer capital works, that the impact on the County’s taxation levy could potentially decrease.
As far as addressing the gap for the rate-based assets, an annual increase of 3.7 per cent to the County’s water revenues and an increase of 8.6 per cent to wastewater rates, would also be required from 2026 to 2034.
“The rate impacts identified above include inflationary adjustments to the County’s operating costs and revenues (i.e., general operating inflation of 2.5 per cent annually),” said Tan. “If, however, other funding sources become available (as mentioned above), or if maintenance practices allow for the deferral of capital works, the impact on the County’s water and wastewater rates would potentially decrease.”
Boyd later told Council that nothing is set in stone and that if they voted in favour of the financial strategy, they wouldn’t be making any sort of funding commitment at this time.
“Council still has to do all the work we always do with the budget in terms of bringing expectations into alignment with what we need to do,” she said.
Councillor John Peirce also made a comment about the reality of what they were dealing with as far as their Asset Management Plan.
“What we talked about tonight, those percentages, those are just to get us to a spot where we should be and that’s an important factor to remember here,” said Peirce. “This isn’t the end-all be-all, this is just to build us up to where we should be if something were to happen.”
Council eventually unanimously approved the adoption of the financial strategy and staff will continue to iron out the details as the full impact of all budgetary pressures will be presented to Council for consideration as part of the Long Term Financial Plan Annual Review at a later date.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
