After nearly 12 hours of adding and subtracting, Kelowna City Council settled on a budget it could agree on. For the first time in several years, council unanimously adopted the 2010 budget, which includes a tax hike of 1.6%. That equates to an increase of a little more than $25 for the owner of an average $486,000 Kelowna home. Council began Thursday's budget deliberations with a 1.2% increase in front of them, however, that number quickly rose with the addition of six new officers for the RCMP, an expenditure that was not originally included in the provisional budget. "We tried to go as far below 2% as possible," says Councillor Robert Hobson, who was happy with the final number of 1.6%. Councillor Andre Blanleil, who has long been an opponent of tax increases which exceed the cost of living, says the 2010 municipal budget is a fair budget given the current economic climate.
He says much of the credit for that goes to City Manager Ron Mattiussi. "I think a lot of it was the re-organization. Different people are running different departments so, they got a chance to look at a budget they didn't have previously," says Blanleil. "I thank that played a big part in their ability to look into each department and say, 'where can we make some savings.' A fresh set of eyes and no the old, we've done it this way for 10 years so we have to keep doing it that way."
Through the process of deliberating the entire budget line by line, council agreed to spend an additional $579,000 over and above what had been recommended in the provisional budget. $478,000 of that went to the RCMP. At the same time, they found ways to trim $225,000, leaving an additional $354,000 on the books for 2010.
Some of the items chopped include:
At the same time, council did agree to fund several programs slated for the chopping block, including the feral rabbit program ($12,000), the Heritage Grant Program ($10,000), Communications Audit ($20,000) as well as replace the current City of Kelowna float at a cost of $50,000. "The float, I look at that as part of our community, part of our spirit. It's our ambassador," says Mayor Sharon Shepherd. "It takes our Lady of the Lake and Princess to all these different communities. It's our representative and talks about who we are. I think the community would be quite disappointed if a float wasn't out there in other cities." Shepherd says overall, she believes the public will react positively to what council and city staff have accomplished with the new budget. In all, the gross taxation demand is slightly more than $93M.
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