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Since 2017, council has been using our savings to protect small businesses from this redistribution problem. We’ve allocated over $90 million to cap their increases at five per cent for both 2017 and 2018. We didn’t have enough cash on hand to do exactly the same thing this year, and there was some criticism of the effectiveness of the program.

So, council agreed to set aside $70.9 million and started looking for better solutions. There were debates over many options.

The mayor presented a compromise scenario to use budget savings to reduce non-residential property taxes by about two per cent this year and then freeze them for the next three years, getting us to a 50/50 split between residential and non-residential taxes in 2022 (it was 45/55 and everyone agreed that’s out of balance). It also used the $70.9 million for an idea presented by business owners: a cash grant to help small businesses improve their revenues.

Council accepted part of this proposal: they kept the residential tax increase at 3.45 per cent for 2019 while decreasing the non-residential by about three per cent overall and asked administration to design a grant program.

When administration came back, the small business resilience grant wasn’t perfect, but it would have put up to $4,000 directly into the pockets of small businesses.

Council said no — the program was seen as bureaucratic and confusing — although no other options were on the table. This left us with $70.9 million set aside, but no way to spend it.