Council slashes provisional budget

Wayne Moore - CASTANET Jan 8, 2009 / 5:00 am

Kelowna Councillors went into the wee hours Thursday, deliberating line-by-line, the 2009 City budget. The marathon session, which began at 8 a.m. Wednesday, finally wrapped up shortly after midnight Thursday. The end result? A proposed 3.35% tax increase for Kelowna taxpayers in 2009. That means an increase of approximately $55 for the average Kelowna home valued at $495,000. The proposed financial plan released in December called for a 4.49% tax hike, equivalent to a $73 increase for the average homeowner. Despite cutting more than $950,000 from the original budget, Councillors Graeme James and Andre Blanleil voted against adopting the budget, feeling the increase was still too high. James let it be known at the beginning of the process he wanted to get the final increase down to around 3%.

Council did trim the budget by a little more than $1.2 million, reducing the increase to 3.02%, however, the addition of two late items helped push the increase back up to 3.35%. Those items include the addition of four new firefighters in October at a cost of more than $63,000 and expanded transit service at a cost of more than $257,000. Mayor, Sharon Shepherd, says Council was very cognizant of the balance needed between the current economic pressures and the need for the city to continue moving forward. "We debated just about every line item that was presented from staff. We made them justify the need for projects to occur for this year versus future years," says Shepherd. "And, for the first budget I've been involved in the management staff provided a sheet of items that they felt comfortable with reducing if council was looking for reductions." Debate over adding the four additional firefighters was one of the hotly contested items. "At the end of the day we did compromise and settled on hiring four new firefighters but only for the final three months of the year, which certainly helped in this year's budget, but recognizing it will have an on-going impact."

The final 2009 tax demand approved by council is $89.96 million, up from $84.3 million in 2008. The 2009 budget will not be finalized until May and Shepherd says some expenditures, such as the transit service expansion may not go through if funding from other sources is not approved.