’Very lean budget‘ bringing tax hike

Ron Seymour 2009-12-12 Kelowna Courier:

The average Kelowna homeowner will pay 1.2 per cent more in municipal property taxes under a provisional 2010 city budget to be considered by council next week. For the owner of a typical single-family home, the proposed increase would boost municipal taxes by $20 – to $1,580 from $1,560. The proposed 2010 increase is well below recent annual tax hikes of 5.7 per cent in 2008 and 3.5 per cent in 2009. Much of the increase in recent years has been associated with the new H2O Fitness and Adventure Centre, a massive indoor swimming pool and leisure park that cost $46 million to build. “This is a very lean budget for 2010,” Mayor Sharon Shepherd said Friday. “The projected tax increase is the lowest I can recollect in the 13 years I‘ve been on city council.” Total taxation demand will rise almost three per cent, from $90.1 million to $92.7 million. More than half of the increase will come from the owners of newly constructed homes, reducing the impact on existing property owners. “My goal for the 2010 financial plan is to maintain existing core services and keep the taxation impact at a minimal level,” city manager Ron Mattiussi wrote in the introduction to the three-inch thick budget document. “With cost pressures, reduced revenues and citizen expectations, it is a difficult task,” said Mattiussi. Mattiussi said the proposed 2010 budget was developed over the last few months in a way that “recognizes the impacts and the reality of a recessionary economy that is expected to continue through most of 2010.”

Highlights from the budget, which will be considered by council at an all-day meeting on Thursday:
– The RCMP wants to add 21 members to the Kelowna detachment, but the budget does not provide for any new members beyond the 141 serving Kelowna.
– The city is negotiating with its unionized workforce, with the current contract set to end this year. However, the budget projects a three per cent total rise in wages and salaries, to $53.5 million from $51.9 million.
– Four per cent of all taxes collected next year will be for debt servicing, up from a low of 1.6 per cent in 2007, but still at a level that Mattiussi says “compares very favourably” to most Canadian cities.

Municipal taxes do not cover other charges relating to such things as the school district, hospital and library. When those charges were factored in this year, an average homeowner‘s total local tax bill was $2,520, after application of the homeowner grant.