The Cariboo Regional District has released their 2023 budget, looking to make an increase of over $1 million.
However, before anything is finalized, The CRD wants to hear from residents about their proposal.
“So we’re really looking for resident’s to give us their open ended feedback, unfiltered, not sifted through a survey that we’ve designed.” says Gerald Pinchbeck, Communications Manager.
“What we’re asking for is for them to really tell us what services’ are important to them, and the give us their feedback through our survey. It’s open ended, their response is open for them to decide what they give us.”
Feedback will be collected until February 10th, where it will be presented to the board of directors for the February 23rd finance and budget committee meeting.
The total budget would be going up from $57.75 million to $58.08 million, through changes in the taxation level.
Though, tax rates will vary depending on the services, with some seeing either two percent to some reaching 10 percent.
“We have to set tax rates for each individual service. It’s not like a municipality where you only have to deal with one tax rate for every single service you provide.” says Pinchbeck
“If you do the math, our increase in overall tax revenue is 3.9 percent, then you dive down into the individual tax rate, and it’s gonna vary depending on what’s going on with that department.”
The lower tax increases will be to account for inflation, where as the higher increases would be to support infrastructure and equipment.
An example Pinchbeck gave was the Miocene fire hall who’ll be seeing an increase of 10 percent for new equipment.
For more information on the budget, you can visit the CRD website here.