The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board says the City of Hamilton should reconsider how much it is charging the Board when the new stormwater fee comes into effect on April 1, 2026.
The issue dominated discussion during the June 26 meeting of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board Liaison Committee.
The Board estimates it will have to pay the City $780,000 annually under the new system, meaning the Board will need to cut around one per cent of its $751-million operating budget.
Ward 7 HWDSB Trustee Dawn Danko said the Board is concerned about the “substantial” cost. “Like the City, we have to pass a balanced budget. This isn’t something that’s well funded, and in fact we’re not well funded in terms of facilities overall from the province.”
The Board’s provincial funding allocation for the 2025/26 school year is already budgeted. The Board will draw $325,000 from its contingency fund to pay the April to August fee next year, said HWDSB Senior Manager Facility Services Dave Anderson.
The fee “represents upwards of seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars to our annual operating budget, which is currently not budgeted for,” he said.
Anderson said the Board was not consulted about the fee. “In my capacity as Senior Facilities Manager, I did not receive any form of communication from the City,” he said. “The only correspondence that I did receive was from the Chamber of Commerce reaching out and advising that this was coming forward potentially.”
Ward 10 Councillor Jeff Beattie called it “excessively disappointing that we failed to engage with our partners at HWDSB in the formation of a program that is going to siphon $780,000 out of the classroom to go into the drain.”
Should City Credit Board for Joint-Use Facilities?
The City of Hamilton uses a number of School Board facilities for municipal recreation programming, and some City recreation centres use school parking lots outside of school hours.
“I think the question around how that’s being managed when we have a shared use agreement is: Is the stormwater runoff from, say, a parking lot that’s shared or a building that’s shared—is that shared then with the City, or do we get a credit for that? So those are some of the key questions that come to mind for me,” Danko said.
Ward 3 Trustee—and Chair of the Board—Maria Felix-Miller welcomes discussion on credits for joint-use facilities, adding that she “wanted to just really be very clear from our side of the table that we would be looking to maximize savings wherever possible.”
The Joint Liaison Committee directed City and Board staff to meet over the summer. A report is to be presented at the next HWDSB-City Liaison Committee meeting on September 25.
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Published: July 2, 2025
Last updated: July 2, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman
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