The majority of council voted in favour of cutting services and taxes for next year due to the pandemic (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

COVID-19 BUDGET

Kamloops council, staff vow to target zero tax increase for 2021

Aug 25, 2020 | 5:09 PM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops will work toward a zero per cent property tax increase in 2021 based on the direction of city council.

At Tuesday’s (Aug. 25) regular council meeting, staff presented a few options — cut taxes and services or maintain services and increase taxes. Council unanimously voted to keep tax increases as close to zero as possible. Revenue losses and a slight increase in expenses have resulted in a $3.5 million deficit since the pandemic emerged in March.

“This is the beginning. In my mind, we’re in a marathon and we’re just out of the starting gates,” said councillor Mike O’Reilly. “We really do have to tighten our belts.”

Councillor Kathy Sinclair added, “I think it’s the right thing to do for the taxpayers. A lot of folks have been very hard hit this year and will continue to be next year. I hope it’s not as bad as I think.”

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The City had intially projected a two per cent tax hike, but it is now trying to prepare for the worst, which is why Corporate Services Director Kathy Humphrey addressed council on Tuesday.

“The message to everyone is the privatization of projects and services is really critical,” she told council. “You need as a community to consider what are our priorities and what we want to continue and what are we prepared to put on hold?”

That is the next challenge tasked to Humphrey and other staff.

“We’re asking staff to come up with the negative version of supplementals and we will put together a whole group of options for council that reduce services and therefore the budget — or increase revenue,” she said.

While this is preliminary, the City says it may mean reducing hours at City Hall or at recreational facilities. It might also result in temporary closures at some facilities to save money.

They are tough decisions staff and council will need to make in the next couple months. However, they stress to Kamloops residents this is all temporary. Mayor Christian even pulled from Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry during his turn at the mic.

“This is not forever. This is for now,” he said. “I think as we look toward next year’s budgeting, if things change it would be my expectation that Ms. Humphrey would pivot on a dime if things showed a lot of improvement.”

Residents will get to have their say on the list of potential budget cuts in the fall.

More quotes from councillors on budget direction:

“There’s a very real unknown here that we’re facing, and that is that we don’t really know the impact of COVID-19 at this time. The financial impact of 2021 — we’re already feeling it, but in 2021, we’ll feel it a lot more. It could be a lot more challenging than this current situation we’re in and I believe it will be quite a bit more extreme.” -Coun. Denis Walsh

“”What I’d like to try to do is see if we can buy ourselves a bit of time here, have a stronger conversation with the community about what they see as core (and) what they see their comfort levels are. If the federal government comes up with some more financial aid programs and people can pay their residential… and commercial taxes — which, from my understanding, have been largely whole in this period — we’ll be okay.” -Coun. Arjun Singh

“I’m hearing from people out there that they want zero per cent (tax increase). I think, for the struggles they’ve been through for the past year-and-a-half, we have no idea. Even if they come out with a vaccine in November, we’re still going to be in this predicament for another year and a half — maybe longer. ” -Coun. Bill Sarai

“This is the beginning. In my mind, we’re in a marathon and we’re just out of the starting gates. We really do have to tighten our belts, but when we use the words ‘cuts’ or ‘reductions’, I think it’s important to remember that this is short term. This is for the phase of getting through COVID and, hopefully, whatever changes may or may not have to be made are temporary.” -Coun. Mike O’Reilly

“”We’re not committing to this course of action forever. We recognize that we’re in a bit of a bind at this point in time, but the process is fluid and things will change as circumstances change. We may actually find ourselves reintroducing things that we have had to cut in the past.” -Coun. Dieter Dudy

“What we’re talking about here is trying to balance quality of life with financial prudence. When I hear Ms. Humphrey say that this will be an iterative process and this is just the first step and is just basically the direction that we’re setting, we’re not committing to a list of things that we’re cutting that is not going to be cut, necessarily, without more input from council.” -Coun. Sadie Hunter

“In general, I don’t support no property tax increase because we are beholden to a unionized workforce, we’re beholden to a number of cost-of-living increases and those are just part of running an operation like this municipality. But I do think this is the right thing to do.” -Coun. Kathy Sinclair

“The expectation that I’m hearing from the public is that we should not be thinking that this is a status quo exercise, but we also have to signal to the public that this is going to painful and that pain is going to have to be shared.” -Mayor Ken Christian

Note: Coun. Dale Bass did not express an opinion during the debate but voted in favour of directing staff toward cuts.