Williams Lake City Council is proposing a tax increase after some number crunching following a special Committee of Whole Council meeting this week.
Councillor Scott Nelson confirmed that the City is proposing a 1.9% tax increase something that Mayor Walt Cobb says was inevitable.
“We’re to that point,” says Cobb.
“We feel that we’ve done as much trimming as we could and with the extra policing costs ($415,000) this year we felt we didn’t really have any alternative unless we were going to reduce services, and when you look at the road situation we also agreed to put a little bit more in roads this year.”
Cobb says that the proposed 1.9% tax hike amounts to about $24 per home.
The City was proposing 60 capital projects for 2018 worth $11.2 million dollars which the City’s Chief Financial Officer, Vitali Kozubenko said would leave the City short of $5.2 million should they choose to move forward with all of them.
“What we did was we went through and looked at things that we felt we could realistically complete in 2018 and stuff that we knew that we couldn’t complete we either axed or we referred to an additional year, but we didn’t want to go out and for a capital project that we simply weren’t going to be doing” says Nelson of the now 41 capital projects for 2018 worth $7 million.
“So it’s a well rounded out budget that I think kind of drives the next several years for our community.”