Budget Documents

The 2025 Budget was adopted in December 2024.

• Budget Overview
• 2025 Capital and 2026 Capital Forecast
• 2027-2034 Capital Forecast 
• 2025 Operating Budget

External Agencies

• Oshawa Senior Community Centres 55+ (O.S.C.C.)
• Oshawa Public Libraries
• The Parkwood Foundation
• Oshawa Historical Society
• The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (R.M.G.)

The 2024 operating and capital budgets, adopted on December 1, 2023, resulted in a 3.89% increase on Oshawa's portion of a resident or property owner's tax bill.

• Budget Overview

Approved budget

• 2024 Approved Capital
• 2025 - 2033 Capital Forecast 
• 2024 Approved Operating

External agencies

• Oshawa Senior Community Centres 55+ (O.S.C.C.)
• Oshawa Public Libraries
• The Parkwood Foundation
• Oshawa Historical Society
• The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (R.M.G.)

The 2023 operating and capital budgets, approved by Council on January 19, 2023, resulted in a 4.98% increase on Oshawa's portion of a resident or property owner's tax bill.

2023 Capital budget

• Capital Budget Memo
• 2023 Approved Capital Projects
• 2024 - 2032 Capital Projects

2023 Operating budget

• Operating Budget overview and summary
• Executive and Legislative
• Office of the Chief Administrative Officer
• Corporate and Finance Services
• Community and Operations Services
• Economic and Development Services
• Safety and Facilities Services
• Oshawa Executive Airport
• Corporate Revenue
• Corporate Expenditures
• Tribute Communities Centre
• External agencies summary
• Advisory Committees of Council

External agencies

• Oshawa Senior Community Centres 55+ (O.S.C.C.)
• Oshawa Public Libraries
• The Parkwood Foundation
• Oshawa Historical Society
• The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (R.M.G.)

The City has developed a framework of continuous improvement over the past several years to improve efficiencies by reviewing services and programs using a variety of approaches to ensure we deliver affordable municipal programs and services efficiently.

The framework includes four areas: Lean Initiatives, Service Reviews, Internal Audit and Risk Management.

The operating budget is a financing plan for the City’s day-to-day operations such as snow removal, road maintenance, recreation, waste services. It is built using a base budget approach that considers cost pressures on programs and services currently being delivered. Some of the factors applied to the base budget are:

• Compensation – Salaries and benefits are updated to reflect annual increases based on collective agreements currently in effect.
• Inflation – Inflation is based on the specific commodities used by the City. Inflation rates for the various commodities are based on current agreements in place and current market trends that may impact bid prices received for City goods and services. Annual inflationary increases applied to the operating budget range from 0% to 13%. Most agreements in place utilize the Consumer Price Index (C.P.I.) as an annual inflation factor. When preparing the budget, the CPI is currently estimated at 2.0%. Based on agreements in place, the inflation ranges from 0% up to 8.0%. Natural Gas is currently estimated at an inflation factor of 13.0% for 2025 and 8.0% for 2026.
• External Agencies – The City contributes funding to specific agencies that provide various recreation and cultural services to its residents. These agencies are OSCC55+, Oshawa Public Libraries, Parkwood Foundation, Oshawa Historical Society and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery.

In the capital budget, the focus is on investments in key strategic priorities for the City's future and covers the costs of constructing and renewing buildings, roads and parks.

Reserves are a critical component of a municipality’s long-term financial planning and assist with fiscal sustainability.

Reserve funds:

• provide a contingency to absorb unexpected shifts in revenues and expenditures;
• fund one-time expenditure requirements;
• contribute to the City’s capital infrastructure requirements; and,
• minimize fluctuations in taxes.

The City has 3 types of reserves.

1. Operating Reserves: an example of an operating reserve is funding to pay for unforeseen severe weather events like severe flooding
2. Capital Reserves: for example, providing funding for the ongoing maintenance of our existing infrastructure such as sidewalks, roads, street lighting and traffic signals.
3. Development Charge Reserves: development charges are set amounts developers and builders pay that are used to fund a portion of capital projects that are a result of growth, for instance acquisition of parkland in a new subdivision.

There are a number of pressures impacting the City’s reserves, these include severe weather events, inflation and competing financial pressures.

Like most municipalities, the most significant pressure on our reserves is the level of funding needed for future replacement and maintenance of aging infrastructure.

Roads, sidewalks, bridges, streetlights, fire stations, recreation centres, pools, arenas, parks, trails, playgrounds and sports fields are all infrastructure. All the things the City owns require maintenance and upkeep.

To address this, the City has reserve fund policies in place and follows best practices to maintain our reserve funds at appropriate levels.

And, to plan ahead and save for the renewal funds collected from the levy will go directly towards infrastructure renewal and replacement.