The cost of recreation is once again going up by 8 percent in the North Cariboo.
The increase for 2026, the same as 2025’s, still needs a stamp of approval from the Cariboo Regional District but the North Cariboo Joint Advisory Committee unanimously approved the hike at Tuesday (Nov 18) night’s meeting.
Most of the increase is to beef up capital reserves.
Jeff Norburn, the Director of Community Services, went over the numbers.
“The proposed 2026 budget is based on a total tax requisition of $5,711,579, which is an increase of $423,080 over 2025. 400 thousand of that is planned to go into capital reserves.”
The plan is to increase the budget by 8 percent in each year of the five year capital plan, although City Councillor Scott Elliott noted that things could change.
“The number one goal of this committee was to increase tax requisition to build up our capital reserves because we’ve had to dig into them. This is all general direction. If things change in the community or if we have any kind of struggles, anything going on, we can change things as we move along. But this is our goal, to try and back up those capital reserves, get them back up to where they should be. I will say that late Director Mary Sjostrom was a strong supporter of this and maybe the biggest driver, but I think it’s a good way to go at this point in time but it can be changed later if need be.”
Capital spending of more than 400 thousand dollars was also approved.
The biggest projects are 150 thousand dollars for a pool roof at the Arts and Recreation Centre and 60 thousand to upgrade the sound system at the West Fraser Centre.
CRD Area I Director Jim Glassford Jim Glassford asked why the sound system at the West Fraser Centre needed to be upgraded noting it’s still a fairly new building.
Norburn said “It’s something that we receive frequent complaints about. We sort of talked about how urgent it was to do that but it is becoming an issue where it’s negatively impacting events that are happening at the centre. Unfortunately that types of technology goes out of date fairly quickly. It feels like the West Fraser Centre just opened yesterday but it was actually 2017, so we’re coming on nine years now.”
City Councillor Mitch Vik asked if some of these projects could be pushed back a year if it was needed.
Norburn said it could if they had to.
