The Township of Muskoka Lakes has come in far under budget on Township insurance.
At the Wednesday meeting councillors agreed to a contract with MIS Municipal Insurance Services Inc for an amount of $648,320 dollars. This is well below the $1.1 million dollars council had for budgeted insurance in 2022, producing $482,080 dollars in budget savings. The coverage would be 15 months from July 1, 2022 to October 1, 2023. Last year the township spent $988,298 dollars on insurance covering a 12 month period.
Councillor Glenn Zavitz congratulated Director of Financial Services Mark Donaldson for a great achievement.
“It’s nice to see that free enterprise still exists,” Zavitz said.
Zavitz mentioned that during the drafting of the 2022 budget there were serious concerns over the size of the insurance expenditure and said that current deal was great news.
According to the staff report issued to council the current municipal insurance market is a ‘hard market’ meaning have to impose stricter rules when it comes to issuing new policies, limit the number of new policies they sell, and reassess the premiums they charge. In the last three years township insurance rates have increased 62%. The deal with MIS Municipal Insurance Services Inc was chosen from a list of three bidders.
The deal means that insurance for the township will be $482,080 dollars lower than originally budgeted. In its report to council staff recommended the extra money should be redeployed for other needs including the hiring of a new IT coordinator.
Councillor Frank Jaglowitz objected to idea of redeploying the excess money to other areas of the municipality. He stated that the savings should be passed on to the taxpayer.
“I think a lot of times we go over budget on a bunch of things and we have to deal with it. And I think once when we go under budget, we should try to pass that savings on to our taxpayer and not spend it,” Jaglowitz said.
Council agreed that the issue of excess money would be decided at a later date.
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