The Budgeting and Financial Planning Department is committed to providing valuable and useful financial information to better assist departments, SMT and Council in financial and strategic decision-making.

Our department is primarily responsible for budgeting, financial planning, and activity based costing. These activities are essential to ensure the City of Vaughan has the tools and information necessary to make well-informed financial and strategic decisions. Further details on each section is provided below:

Annual Operating Budget
All municipalities are mandated, through the Municipal Act, to prepare a balanced operating budget annually, but the budget serves a more important role as the City of Vaughan’s financial guide on how City tax dollars will be utilized in the coming year. The budget is a very detailed document featuring important financial information on all approved and legislated municipal initiatives, programs and services, including their associated funding requirements. Most importantly, this document provides the base for which the annual tax rate is established. The approved budget is a result of an extensive and exhaustive approval process, which requires department, SMT, and ultimately Council approval.

Long-Range Financial Plan (LRFP)
The City of Vaughan is one of the fastest growing cities in Ontario. Over the past 10 years the City’s population has increased by almost 60%. Like most high growth municipalities, Vaughan is experiencing the challenges associated with increasing service demands, aging infrastructure and changing regulations. Of particular concern is how to manage Vaughan’s aging infrastructure, which will require significant repair and replacement investment decisions in the near future to ensure they remain operational.

Complimenting the existing budget process, the Budgeting and Financial Planning Department with the assistance, support, and cooperation of other departments is endeavoring to develop a long-range financial plan. This strategic initiative is vital, as it articulates Vaughan ’s long-term operational and capital funding trends, allowing staff and Council to better understand Vaughan ’s future financial requirements. Although not a precise science, the ability to consolidate and summarize key future financial trends and identify long-term implications and their aggregated effects on debt service levels, reserves, and the tax rate enables staff to identify issues and test a variety of financial approaches. It also provides a framework in which to develop progressive fiscally prudent policies and strategies, which compliment Vaughan ’s vision, initiatives and guide important financial decisions. This information will play an important role in forward planning and is one of many significant steps in managing Vaughan ’s future.

Activity Based Costing
Recently, multiple legislative changes have come into effect, which restrict the application, pricing, and reporting of specific city permits, licenses, user fees, and other charges. Theses new limitations require most Municipalities to modify existing fee policies, processes, calculations and reporting methods in order to comply. Given the magnitude of these changes and potential financial implications an activity based costing process was deployed to assist departments with the costing of any impacted fees within the new legislative guidelines. This is a very significant corporate wide effort encompassing legislation interpretation, fee identification, and developing costing methodologies and models for each unique legislative requirement. Further efforts will be required to annually update and report on these costs and assist other departments in costing their respective programs and services.

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