Nanaimo city council stuck to a 1.5 per cent tax hike last Monday, as it moved one step closer to finalizing this year’s budget and tax rate.
Nanaimo council is one vote from approving a financial plan amendment, which has to be adopted by May 15 to allow the city to collect taxes. It’s on the agenda today (May 1) for adoption, along with a property tax rate bylaw.
Earlier this month, homeowners faced a potentially-higher tax increase due to severe weather, but during a finance and audit committee meeting councillors opted to keep taxes at a 1.5 per-cent increase with costs coming from reserves and the delay of a new debt stabilization fund. Councillors have also supported continuing a one-per cent tax hike for asset management. The decisions were included in the financial bylaw Monday, which all but Coun. Diane Brennan agreed to push forward on.
“Our staff have done a superlative job. I think they’ve done a great job, they have implemented the decisions of the majority of council,” she said. “I simply think the budget is a skinny budget, it’s a political budget and I can’t support it.”
Coun. Jerry Hong, however, is happy with the budget.
“I would like to see zero-per cent tax increase but I understand that’s never going to happen ever year,” he said.
Hong said people were up in arms about snow removal and roads, but he said it’s Mother Nature, things happen and are going to happen. This could be a drought summer, he said, the city is going to tell residents to conserve and water revenues will go down, so then the city is short a million dollars from user fees.
“We can’t control Mother Nature and I think staff have done an excellent job trying to forecast the future by not over-taxing the residents,” he said.
Coun. Gord Fuller also likes the budget and doesn’t think it’s politically motivated.
“We’re constantly asked by the community to keep taxes low, sometimes we have to raise them other times we don’t have to raise them.”