The North Cariboo Joint Advisory Committee, Quesnel City Council and the Northern CRD Directors, have directed staff to proceed with an 8 percent tax increase for recreation this year, and with a 40 percent hike over the next five years.
Jeff Norburn, the Director of Community Services with the City, noted that the increase was necessary because of inflation.
“The City settled with our CUPE local. Normally we increase our operating budget about 1.5 percent per year, but of course wages make up approximately 70 percent of our budget and the first year of the CUPE settlement was a 5 percent increase, so that’s going to have an impact on the budget.”
Norburn also noted that municipal was just a portion of the overall budget however, as it also includes allocations to the capital reserve, capital programs, the rural recreation properties, and services.
City Councillor Martin Runge was the only one lobbying for a smaller increase.
“For me I would actually like to have, when we come to our next report, different ranges because given the changing economic things around our world today and given the pressures households face and all that type of stuff that gets together, I think we still have to look at. I would take 8 percent at the top end but I’d also say what do we do if we want a 4 percent or a 5 percent increase, because we have to start conserving all those things together. And I understand that we also have a deficit in our capital reserves, but personally I get worried about some of the taxation rate for some of the people that are on fixed incomes and things like that.”
The majority of the Committee was concerned with the state of reserves however.
They are currently at 520 thousand dollars and Darron Campbell, the Manager of Community Services with the CRD, noted that it wasn’t enough money for a budget in a function of this size.
Barb Bachmeier, the CRD Director for Area B, said they have tried to increase reserves in the past but were unsuccessful.
“We had this discussion about 4 percent a year or two ago and our capital reserves did not increase. So now we’ve gone to 8 percent because we really have to make up the difference because we didn’t put it away a couple of years ago. We all don’t want to raise our taxes, but if we continue down this road our infrastructure is going to fall apart.”
Councillor Mitch Vik was on the same page.
“I would agree with my colleagues that we basically put ourselves in a really awkward position and vulnerable position that if we have some major failures in our infrastructure we’re in trouble. So I think we should have at least a basement level of contribution that we should be making. If that number is 400 thousand like we tried to achieve this year, then maybe that’s the number.”
This plan, if they stick to it, would add around 2.8 million dollars to the capital reserves by year five.
The Committee dipped into capital reserves this past year in order to expand the concession and build a new dressing room for the Quesnel Kangaroos at the West Fraser Centre.
In the end, Runge also agreed that reserves needed to be beefed up, but then suggested that perhaps they needed to look at service levels in order to keep the increase down.
One other piece of information that came out of the meeting was the fact that even with an 8 percent increase cuts may be necessary, or perhaps the increase may have to go even higher.
A report will be coming back to the committee later in the fall.
