On March 27, Council took its first kick at the 2023 overall budget.
At the start of the night, the budget was sitting at $20,736,976, an increase of $632,889 over 2022, or a need for an extra 6.77 percent in taxes.
The District is taking a new approach to budgeting this year. During their special project and capital projects discussion earlier in the year, Council avoided discussing actual dollar amounts, instead discussing increases to taxation in terms of percentages.
This decision was made to hide budgets from potential contractors who, instead of bidding what a job might actually cost, would simply bid to the budget.
The largest portions of the budget go to Community Services and Public Works, coming in at over $5 million between the two.
However, these have historically been the district’s largest budget items, and are only seeing a 1.35 and 1.57 total increase year over year.
The largest increase in terms of impact to taxes is solid waste, which is going up 1.82 percent.
Not every department is seeing an increase. The finance department, for instance, is seeing a 1.81 percent decrease, while Fire is seeing a 0.13 percent decrease.
The discussion lasted half an hour past the three hour cut-off time, as the town’s Financial Consultant— Natalie Wehner—was in town for the meeting as opposed to attending over Zoom.
By the end of the night, council had managed to whittle the budget down to $510,231, or 5.46 percent over last year’s budget.
Council is within their rights to change the budget up until it is sent to Victoria on May 15, so none of these figures are in stone yet.
The next major step will be to figure out how to cover that 5.46 percent increase when it sets taxation rates. That meeting has not been scheduled yet.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
