By James Peters / Chad Klassen

Council settles on 2.96% tax increase for Kamloops ratepayers in 2019

Mar 12, 2019 | 3:25 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops council has approved a dozen supplemental budget items, settling on an expected tax increase of 2.96 per cent for local ratepayers in 2019.

In budget discussions this morning, council approved requests that would add $4.2 million to this year’s budget — but only $765,000 of that total would come from taxation.

The 2.96 per cent increase would apply to an average household assessed at $403,000, amounting to $62.51 in increased taxation.

“We were able to accomodate most of them through other sources of funding other than general taxation,” said Christian. “But at the end of the day, we did manage to keep things under three per cent, and if you look around at neighbouring municipalities, particularly those around our size, I think that’s a number this council should be able to be quite proud of.”

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A 2.96 per cent jump is up from the preliminary increase of 2.26 per cent. Among the highlights is $37,500 in 2019 for 3,000 more transit hours, $535,000 to remove the aging buildings at the old Rayleigh Correctional Centre, $1 million to fund the transformation of McArthur Island into a disc golf course, and $1.05 million to upgrade the new KFR Training Centre, which would be funded through general surplus. 

“The fire department had put together the plan assuming the funding was going to come through taxation, so they didn’t want to ask for $1 million all at once in one year,” said the city’s director of corporate services Kathy Humphrey. “So they had put it together as a three-year plan, but when council wanted it to come from an alternative funding source that wasn’t taxation, we were able to pull the full $1 million for this year.”

The KFR Training Centre is among eight of the 12 items approved that are being funded from coffers that don’t require taxation. Also included in that group is $200,000 from community works to fund the design for the Stuart Wood cultural centre. 

“It will provide us with working drawings of what this projects will look,” said Christian. “Now we’re waiting on the TtS for a letter of understanding, and now we have that money there when we get the letter of understanding. We can put the two of them together and go to the provincial government to secure the title on the property as well as start to shop around both the provincial and federal government for grant funding for this exciting opportunity.”

The biggest tax impact comes from $550,000 for asset management, creating a contingency fund for the next 10 years to add a 0.5 increase to the tax rate every year for the next decade. 

Finalizing the supplemental list means the tax rate increase for 2019 will be set at 2.96 per cent, barring any emergencies. 

“We need just over $10 million in property taxes to be collected from across our taxpayers, so now what we do is we wait for BC Assessment to give us the roll, figure out what the overall value is in each class, and then divide that up across the classes,” noted Humphrey. “So there shouldn’t be too many changes between now and the middle of April.”