The latest municipal budget figures show an increase over the last estimate presented to council.
As of Feb. 4, District staff are expecting that the municipality will need an extra $1.45 million in taxes for 2020, which is a jump of about 4.9% from the 2019 budget year. Back in December, staff thought this number would be $1.38 million.
The $1.45-million figure is the likely number that will be finalized, as staff will now begin drafting a bylaw.
Staff expect that the District’s growth will help offset this amount by about $588,000.
As a result, they say that the expected tax revenue increase will be about $864,000, or roughly 2.9%.
This doesn’t represent the tax rate individuals will get. That will be determined at a later date once council decides how to split the tax burden between homeowners, businesses and industry.
For the general operating fund and utilities combined, the municipality expects to have a revenue of $57.2 million while spending $46.2 million in 2020.
The general operating fund covers operational expenses such as protective services, transportation, recreation and community development, among other things. This fund is paid for by taxes.
Utilities are paid via fees and include water, sewer and solid waste services.
Rolland Russell, the acting manager of financial planning, noted that there were significant amounts of money in the capital plan — about $46.9 million.
The capital plan determines the municipality’s long-term investments in facilities and infrastructure.
However, more than $12 million of that spending will be from carryforward capital projects, he said.
These items were in previous budgets, but were not started or completed. As a result, they’re now going to be in this year’s financial plan.
“We’ve already taxed for that amount, we would take any unspent amounts and they would be placed into a reserve of accumulated surplus and we would withdraw that amount from the accumulated surplus in the following year,” said Russell.
“None of the carryforward projects you see being brought forward to you today have any direct impact on tax in future. The taxation for these projects has already taken place.”
Mayor Karen Elliott said the amount of carryover was quite high.
“It is overestimating the capacity of our organization to do this work,” said Elliott.
Rolland said that items have to be included in the budget even if there’s no guarantee they will start this year, because if there is an opportunity to start them, the municipality needs it in the budget before it can go ahead, as per the Local Government Act. “There’s always going to be a certain degree of carryforward projects,” he said.
