A proposal spelling out how the City of Windsor and the County of Essex will share a $200-million levy could come to city council in the first month of 2016.
Windsor CAO Helga Reidel says she's had a brief discussion with the county's CAO, Brian Gregg, but there's still a lot of details to work through before a report goes to their respective councils.
"If we are going to do the levy and have it commence in 2016 then we would have to know by approximately the end of this first quarter in order that we can build it into our tax policies and that taken care of before the tax bills go out in June," she says.
Reidel says there are a couple of options to split the levy including dividing it per capita, by weighted assessment or 50-50.
Windsor city council approved the levy for the new hospital system, including a new acute care facility on County Rd. 42, during its budget deliberations before Christmas. It was a last minute addition to the marathon session.
County council approved it just the week before.
Reidel says the money would likely accumulate in city coffers until it is needed in 2026, about the time construction on the new facility starts.
"Just like any other cost that the city incurs, it would become an expense item in our budget, and it would become then something we'd have to levy," says Reidel. "In this particular case, it would be something then that we would turn over to the hospital."
She says the advantage of adding it to the city's expenses as soon as possible is it would have a smaller impact annually on the budget.
