KITCHENER -- The Region of Waterloo is facing a nearly $5 million monthly revenue shortfall as COVID-19 measures disrupt the way it does business.
Lower revenue from transit fees, housing and childcare fees, planning application fees, airport charges and provincial offences revenue have all contributed to the income drop.
While there have been offset savings, the region's monthly net loss still sits at about $2 million.
Now, the region is turning to higher levels of government for help as it looks toward life with easing pandemic restrictions.
"We're committed to keeping essential services running when people need them most," said Regional Chair Karen Redman at a media briefing on Monday morning.
"This is why I sent a formal request to our federal government on behalf of regional council asking for financial assistance moving forward."
The above fees and property taxes are some of the only financial tools that the region has to work with—those, and reductions in spending on services and programming.
Unlike federal or provincial governments, municipalities cannot borrow money or run a deficit to account for the financial toll that COVID-19 has had.
Even if they could, Chief Administrative Officer Mike Murray said that he believes most municipalities wouldn't want to because it would be too difficult to pay it back.
"If we created a big hole for ourselves, one of the questions on everybody's mind is, 'well how would ever dig out of that hole,' and really with the sources of revenue that municipalities have, there would be only two ways to dig out of that hole," Murray explained during the news conference.
"One would be significant increases in property taxes or significant reductions in program spending."
The region says that from a senior staffing level, there have been no conversations with the province to cut or cancel any provincial infrastructure programs.
However, the region is in discussions with provincial ministers about stimulus packages that may help restart the economy in the region by getting shovel-ready projects started as soon as possible.
"One whole area of idea is affordable housing. We think it would be entirely feasible and appropriate for the province and potentially the federal government to create some sort of housing infrastructure stimulus program that could be ramped up really quickly using existing programs," Murray said.
"We think there's capacity in the residential construction industry and it would solve multiple problems, create multiple benefits."
One possible roadblock, though, is the current one-third-each cost-sharing model between the three levels of governments.
Redman said Monday that the region won't be able to come up with that money when the time comes.
"We are bleeding money as I've already indicated, $4.8 million per month, we have increased expenses as well during the pandemic," she explained.
"There will have to be a different financial arrangement because we are happy to animate the economy, we feel we are in a really good position as municipalities to do that, but we are not going to have the financial capacity to come up with the one third of the project funding which is what has historically happened in these cost-sharing projects."
The province's Financial Accountability Officer said Monday that the Ontario budget deficit could double to $41 billion as it tries to recover an economy stalled by COVID-19 restrictions.
Ontario took its first steps to reopening the economy on Monday, with thousands of people going back to work as some previously-closed businesses were allowed to reopen.
