Jeremy Deutsch - Kamloops This Week Published: February 26, 2009
After several weeks of budget deliberations by city council, property owners can expect to see a 1.94 per cent tax increase this year. While that number works out to $28 for the average property (assessed at $290,000) it doesn’t include the garbage utility-rate increase of 10 per cent or $9.90, or a full year of curbside-recycling fees, which is an extra $7. “The whole impact for the resident, it’s about $44.90 for municipal services, all in,” said Sally Edwards, the city’s director of finance. City council reached a 1.94 per cent hike in a number of ways. Rather than taxing residents for the full complement of 115 RCMP officers, which is unlikely to be realized due to officers on leave for various reasons, the city will instead tax to 95 per cent of the level, saving another $730,000.If, by chance, the city needs to cover the extra five per cent, it can access its reserved fund.
The city also has about $3 million of unexpended money remaining from last year’s budget, and that money will be put toward one-time capital charges this year. The tax increase is on par with years past, as 2008 called for a 2.27 per cent increase, 2007 was two per cent and 2006 was 1.5 per cent. Keeping a tax increase at two per cent was a goal Mayor Peter Milobar was hoping to achieve from the outset of the budget process. “The fact that we’re able to maintain our service levels and try to address some of our shortfalls . . . and still keep under two per cent is a very good news story,” he said.
Some of the highlights that made it into the budget include increased snow removal for bus stops, the construction of a fire-department maintenance shed and an incremental increase to hire more firefighters to staff the Aberdeen fire hall, which will be built in 2011. Another $200,000 will be spent on tree removal to battle the tussock moth. The city has yet to set the industrial tax rate, which had been capped at one per cent for the last three years. Edwards said a decision on that rate will be made after the property-tax rate is set. A public forum on the five-year financial plan, including the budget, is planned for March 10 at the Henry Grube Education Centre. Final adoption of the budget is expected in April.
Meanwhile, residents in apartment buildings and multi-family units will have to wait for curbside recycling to arrive as council scrapped a planned pilot project for this year. The $100,000 project was postponed, with council citing the fact commodity markets are at the lowest they’ve been for some time. In other words, the city isn’t getting as much for material collected as it once did.Instead, Kamloops is using the money to cover the increased costs to run its four recycling depots. The annual operating costs for the city depots was $164,000, but in 2009 will jump to $266,000. The city’s plan is to re-examine the pilot project next year in hopes the recycling market rebounds. Milobar said adding $100,000 each to operate the depots and the pilot project would be a bit of a stretch this year. Other projects dropped include tile upgrades in the family change room at the Tournament Capital Centre’s Canada Games Pool and landscape restoration on boulevards.
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Editorial Kamloops This Week: Taxes are taxes, no matter their names
When this newspaper posed a question about taxes on its website recently, the response was predictable and surprising. Yes, the query did indeed elicit what we expected, yet we were still a bit taken aback. The question of the week asked whether Kamloops property owners would be accepting of a tax increase this year of about two per cent. The response? The clear majority‚ 68 per cent, replied they were opposed to such a small hike. Granted, any tax increase is unwelcome news in a country where taxes are exorbitant. However, such opposition was a bit surprising given the relatively tame property-tax hike facing residential homeowners — it will be 1.94 per cent, which is chump change compared to massive increases facing other municipalities in recent times, including a 16 per cent wallop that ate into the wallets of Abbotsford homeowners last year. Then again, perhaps Kamloops taxpayers viewing our website question were fully aware the 1.94 per cent property-tax hike is not the last of the extra cash they will be paying to city hall this year. There is also a significant increase in the taxes homeowners will pay to have their garbage taken from their curbs by city workers. So, while city council has done a good job in whittling down the property-tax increase to 1.94 per cent (which means another $30 or so if your home is valued at about $300,000), we must remember that another $10 (equivalent to a 10 per cent hike) will be taken from your pocket in the form of garbage taxes. Add in another $7 for the annual recycling tax and the total additional bill for the owner of that $300,000 home is about $45 — which, in reality, is more than a 1.94 per cent tax increase. Taxes are taxes, even those presented as “utility fees” or “curbside services.”
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