While it still has to be rubber stamped by the Cariboo Regional District, the North Cariboo Joint Advisory Committee endorsed a five year financial plan in Quesnel last (Tuesday) night that includes a four percent tax increase in each year.

The vote was unanimous.

Mary Sjostrom, the CRD Director for Area A, says most of the increase will go into reserves.

“I actually supported that when we brought it forward two years ago because our reserves had been so badly depleted and I think with a function that is costing us this much money we need to need to have money in reserve.”

The increase to reserves would be $150,000 in 2022, $250,000 in 2023, and $500,000 in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

1 1/2 percent of the increase was chalked up to inflation.

Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson also successfully lobbied for preparing a shovel ready project for a new covered hard court venue

“In today’s world, with the heat bomb that we experienced this summer and smoke that we have experienced on and off for the last 3 or 4 years, if you’ve got an indoor hard court venue it allows the kids at Helen Dixon to still have a place to go if we’re in the middle of smoke or it’s 42 degrees.   It also allows our pickleballers to go some place, it allows our tennis players to go, and then they can move indoors over the winter so it extends the season for all of those.”

Simpson says they are adding it as a business objective to the recreation plan going forward to just simply do the work of what will it look like, where would it be located, and what would be the potential price for it.

“Because if we can get it into that level of understanding of where that might be, then if an appropriate grant opens up, we’ve got a project that we can quickly put together and get into the grant.  So there is no capital in the budget.  It’s only a nominal increase within the contingency built into the budget, so there won’t be any tax increase to do that.”

The total tax requisition for 2022 is for just over 4.3 million dollars.