Legal Services manages a varied caseload, dealing with a broad range of legal issues faced by a single-tier municipality and relating to provincial and federal jurisdiction. The Legal Services Division provides a range of legal services to the Corporation, City Council, the CAO, and City staff on issues related to planning and land development; real estate transactions; real property agreements; by-law drafting; labour and employment; social services including housing; legislative interpretation, contracts and advocacy before administrative tribunals and the courts. Legal Services staff work closely with the Insurance and Risk Management Coordinator involving litigation and insurance coverage for contractual and other risk management documents. Legal Service's caseload is determined by the needs and projects of Council and City Departments.

The 2025 budget includes increased costs for approved salary and benefits, and inflationary increases in other expenditures. A portion of Legal Services expenses are recovered from other divisions where third-party funding or fees are in place. In 2025 budget, these recoveries increased and offset the expense increases resulting in a decreased net requirement.

The Legal Services Division has requested a new staff position not included in the budget. This request can be found in Section 4 Staffing Requests not included in the Draft 2025 Budget.

Realty Services

The Realty Services Division is responsible for the management of the City’s real property interests including acquisitions, dispositions, leases, licences, easements, encroachments and other agreements, appraisal services, real estate consulting, marketing, procurement, negotiations, and the management of inventories of the City’s real property interests with a view to maximizing returns for the City.

The division is responsible for leading in the area of municipal Real Property Management including developing and brokering innovative solutions to complex real estate matters and functioning as a corporate resource on Real Property Management requirements of various capital initiatives across the organization. The division develops, implements, and monitors compliance to corporate policies and procedures related to Real Property Management.

Interactive Budget

Explore the City's budget using the interactive OpenBook feature, including expenses by department and division as well as a breakdown of what a typical residential property taxpayer pays per $100,000 of assessment.

The full budget information is available in the Draft 2025 Budget book.

The OpenBook budget tool enhances the transparency of the City's Budget by allowing us to share financial information visually in accessible and easy to understand formats. View our budget data using charts, tables, and graphs. We hope you find this helpful.

Through our OpenBook reports, you can start at the organizational level then click on a department to go down to the division/section/service level as you explore the financial information for the City. Flip between charts, tables and graphs to display the data in a way that visualizes the information based on your preference.

In OpenBook tables, all column headers labeled as "Current Year" refer to 2025; "Previous Year" refers to 2024.

Please note: The 2025 Budget is the first year that the City has used this budget tool to enhance how it shares information with residents. We're learning how to use the new platform and will be adding features and reports as we explore the tool's capabilities.

OpenBook budget tool