Quesnel City Council unanimously passed a $22,128,153 operating budget at Tuesday (Feb 17) night’s meeting.
The bottom line for residential taxpayers is a 2.5% increase.
Director of Finance Kari Bolton went over the numbers.
“That equates to $34.04 for the average house, or $9.20 per $100,000, and $40 per $100,000 for commercial and light industry.”
Bolton noted that those numbers would change based on your assessment.
“If you’re assessment increases higher than the average increase, which this year was 3%, then your taxes are going to go up higher than what council has said the tax increase would be. If your assessment went up 3% then the 2.5 tax increase is what you’ll approximately receive, and if your assessment dropped or is lower than the average increase then your property taxes are likely to go down or lower.”
Major industry will be getting a bit of a break this year.
“We’ve included in the budget package the consideration of an adjustment of a 3% reduction to major industry. This is using penalty payments that we received from industry last year in 2025 to reduce their taxation in 2026.”
Bolton said that would bring the overall increase for major industry down to 1%.
She said that Quesnel was one of the most heavily dependent municipalities on major industry for property taxation.
“Last year 53% of the property taxation collected for the city came from major industry. Our neighbours are not nearly as heavily reliant on heavy industry as we are. Prince George at 14%, Williams Lake at 20% and 100 Mile at 15%.”
Council did a number of things to get the proposed tax increase down this year.
That included $635,000 in cuts.
“There were a variety of cuts, some to contractors, some positions were eliminated, and some to reserves. Most of the positions eliminated were to retirements or they were part-time hours. There was some exempt staff, there was some public works, there was a bylaw officer, it was spread all around “
Bolton said approximately 5.2 positions were eliminated in total.
There was an addition to the budget as well in the form of four Watch Clerks for the RCMP.
City Councillor Scott Elliott explained what they will do.
“What’s happening right now compared to a lot of other communities is that our crews have to do all of their paperwork and they’re getting bogged down by at least 40% of the paperwork. And we really want our members out on the street and I’m sure everybody else does. So what the Watch Clerk does is take care of all the housekeeping, so we can have the members out there. It’s one of our supplemental items that we had to agree to, and it raises it slightly, but it’s really important I think for our community.”
Bolton also told Council that more than 500 people took part in the budget survey this year, which was a lot more than in previous years.
She said one of the most common themes was public safety, homelessness and drugs.
