The City Council decided Tuesday that many of the city’s user fees would increase in the new year for services such as site rentals and marina fees, among others, while a motion to freeze the public transportation fees at the 2024 level have been canceled.

In reviewing the proposed user fee increases presented to council, Ward 3 Coun. Angela Caputo asked the council to consider keeping transit fares at the current level of $3.25 per trip instead of increasing them by a quarter to $3.50 starting Jan. 1, 2025.

Caputo noted that a person on Ontario Works receives $733 per month to cover basic needs.

“I realize it’s very easy to talk about 25 cents at this table, that’s only a quarter. But when you look at a budget for basic needs, $733 a month, 25 cents can make a big difference,” Caputo said.

Public transportation is one of the services offered by the city and operated at a deficit.

Once 2024 is over, city staff estimate that operating transit this year will have cost $9.2 million more than it brings in in revenue, with a projected shortfall of $9.4 million. dollars in 2025. In other words, Sault Transit fares are 73 percent subsidized by the city. and, if they weren’t, each ride would cost about $14.70.

Brent Lamming, the city’s community services director, noted that at one time ice fees for municipal arenas remained frozen for several years, necessitating a big jump once it turned out to be necessary to adjust them.

“If we don’t make some of these small increases over the years, it will eventually boil down to larger chunks in the long run,” Lamming said.

Last year, the City Council voted to increase the one-way fare from $3.20 to the current $3.25, an increase of 1.5 percent or a penny.

Caputo’s motion to freeze transit fares was supported by Luke Dufour, Lisa Vezeau-Allen and Stephan Kinach, but was ultimately defeated, resulting in a 7.79 percent increase in transit trips. for 2025.

Examples of other user fees that will increase in the new year: ice rental for adults will increase from $210 to $215, public swimming admission for adults will increase from $5.31 to 5, $53 and parking downtown will go from $1.60 per hour to $1.75. .

Acting as a delegation on the user fee motion, Mark Brown asked councilors not to approve an increase in user fees as recent municipal budgets have generated multi-million dollar surpluses.

“That means that when this budget is in surplus, every time you buy a Greyhounds hockey ticket, you are paying a little too much. And every time you buy a mausoleum for your loved one, you pay a little more. And every time you go to Rhodes to swim or take swimming lessons, you pay too much. And if you buy a fire permit or a building permit, you’re paying too much,” Brown told the council.

City Treasurer Shelley Schell clarified that much of the funds from these surpluses came from unfilled vacancies, unexpected increases in investment returns and a one-time return due to a change in transportation carrier. social benefits of the city.

“None of these things that Mr. Brown alluded to caused our surplus at any time,” Schell said. “One thing we can’t do is just look at one line item in the budget and make assumptions about what’s happening.”

Although user fees had a surplus of $2.9 million in 2023, that surplus came primarily from additional water revenues through the PUC.