What was said in the room on September 8, in the Township's own words, and what it means for your tax bill.
You would never accept hockey results nine months late, and rightly so. Imagine the NHL sat on the Stanley Cup final under a media embargo, no fans in the building, the whole thing played at a secret arena, then announced the score a month before the next playoffs. So why accept your Township's financial scorecard nine months after the year was done? You shouldn't. Council shouldn't. And the Province doesn't.
Here is the 2025 audit. The year ended December 31. KPMG's Independent Auditor's Report is dated July 24, 2026. The statements carry the Mayor's signature and the CAO's signature. On August 6 the CAO emailed me the public download link; the signed set had been posted on the Township website that day. Council met five days later, on August 11. The audited statements were not on the agenda. The next regular meeting was September 8. That is the day Council sat down with them, day 251 after the final buzzer and one month before voting opens on October 14.
The Province sets the date. Every Ontario municipality had to file its 2025 Financial Information Return by May 31, 2026. As of September 21, 226 of 444 have. Carling is not one of them. Two of Carling's own pool partners have: McKellar on August 27, Seguin on September 17. Same pool, same boards, same partnership numbers to consolidate. They filed. Carling did not.
The bank sets the same date. Scotiabank's loan agreement for the pool, which Carling guarantees for $1,549,180, requires each guarantor's audited statements "within 150 days of the Borrower's fiscal year-end." That is May 30. The auditor signed July 24. On September 8 he told Council the returns "are due, they come in right now in September." They were due in May.
Big shout out to the financial gods. For the first time this term, Council had a meeting about numbers with a financial report on the table. Congratulations. This is progress in the home stretch. The report ran to June 30. Ten weeks old on the day it was read.
The councillors seeking re-election got to ask the auditor some pointed questions. Pointed at my points from the all-candidates meeting and my materials. The auditor had gone to tremendous lengths to be ready for them, taking apart the $29.1 million and the $8.7 million piece by piece. An education this Council could have had four years ago. Let's go through it, so everyone gets it.
The 2025 surplus is $2,040,765. In the auditor's words, "over $700,000 higher than what was budgeted." Total revenue was $9.8 million, "almost $1 million over what was budgeted." Cash rose from $7.6 million to $8.7 million. Every reserve is covered by cash. The auditor reported no concerns and "sufficient reserves."
"There's no new debt, hasn't been in over 10 years," said the CAO. Turn to the Statement of Financial Position. Bank indebtedness, note 20: $264,285 at December 31, 2025. Zero the year before. That is Carling's share of the pool's operating line of credit, which the Township guarantees. Every operating shortfall at the pool goes on that line. It is new. It is debt. It is growing.
The accumulated surplus reached $29.1 million. The auditor was careful to say most of that is roads, buildings and equipment, not cash. Agreed. That has never been the point. The point is how it got there. It was $9.6 million in 2017. It is $29.1 million now. It grew because taxes and fees beat spending every single year. Nobody in the room disputed that. They explained it.
The CAO told Council "a lot of those assets are funded not just from municipal taxation dollars, but also a lot of grant money." The auditor agreed. Here is the nine-year record from the Township's own audited statements, 2017 to 2025.
Property tax: $50.3 million. Fees, interest and other: $7.9 million. Grants: $15.7 million. Total spending: $55.1 million.
Take every grant dollar away. Taxes and fees alone beat spending by $3.1 million. Carling ran a surplus for nine years without a single grant. In 2025, taxation was 67.7 percent of revenue. Grants were 22 percent.
And a grant is not free money. It is your federal and provincial taxes coming home. Nobody in Carling got a rebate for it.
Watch the sleight of hand. The CAO started with $8.7 million in cash at December 31, 2025. He took off the fire hall bill owed to the contractor. He took off $3.3 million planned to come out of reserves in 2026. His words: "Now we're sitting down at $3.8, $4 million."
Those are 2026 spending plans subtracted from a 2025 balance. You can do that in any year and make any cash pile look small. The fire hall was always going to be built from the reserves you were taxed to build. That is what reserves are for. Spending them does not make the money vanish. It shows where it came from: your tax bill, collected years early.
One slide turned the $2.04 million surplus into a $1,020,351 "deficit" by subtracting every capital purchase of the year, including the Township's share of the Parry Sound pool. On the recording, the CAO then added back the $1.2 million transferred from reserves and landed at "$180,000 surplus, like internally." Their own method. Still a surplus. In a $4.4 million capital year.
For four years these statements were adopted without a public walkthrough. This year the auditor spent forty minutes explaining, unprompted, why $29 million is not $29 million. A councillor asked "for public record" whether the auditor was comfortable with reserves. The auditor offered a peer comparison report in one to two months, the same comparison you can already read on this site.
The Township's meeting recording link went dead for two days after posting. A sitting councillor who is not running told a community group it was a "technical error" after residents showed it offline. It is back up now.
None of the numbers on this site changed on September 8. They were confirmed by the auditor, on the record, from the Township's own statements.
Sources: Township of Carling, audited financial statements 2025, signed by the Mayor and CAO: Independent Auditor's Report dated July 24, 2026, KPMG, Sudbury; Statement of Financial Position (cash and cash equivalents $8,688,598; bank indebtedness note 20, $264,285; accumulated surplus $29,079,775); Statement of Operations (annual surplus $2,040,765; budget $1,306,223). Posted on carling.ca August 6, 2026. Township of Carling Council meeting, August 11, 2026, draft minutes: no item on the 2025 audited financial statements. Township of Carling Council meeting, September 8, 2026, recording: KPMG presentation and Q&A; CAO financial update, Appendix A to C, January 1 to June 30, 2026. Township of Carling audited financial statements 2017 to 2025, Statement of Operations, actual column: taxation, government grants federal and provincial, user fees and other revenue, total expenses; nine-year totals computed from the audited figures; 2017 accumulated surplus $9.6 million. Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Financial Information Return 2025, EFIS file posted September 21, 2026: 226 of 444 municipalities filed; McKellar August 27, Seguin September 17; Carling not filed. Statutory deadline May 31, 2026 (Municipal Act, 2001, s.294). Bank of Nova Scotia Letter Loan Agreement, West Parry Sound Recreation and Cultural Centre Joint Municipal Service Board, Schedule A to Township of Carling By-law 2025-001: General Borrower Reporting Conditions, guarantors' audited statements within 150 days of fiscal year-end; Carling guarantee $1,549,180.
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