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By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: In the face of a big tax hike, zero-based budgeting is a must

Nov 23, 2022 | 4:54 AM

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE to start a new job and have to tell the people who hired you they’ll need to pay more to run the business?

That’s what Kamloops City council is facing as it looks at a new inflation-influenced budget for next year. The finance department gave council a look at the 2023 provisional numbers yesterday and they don’t look pretty.

A lot of it has to do with the pandemic but a lot also has to do with rising costs of materials and services. Everything from road paint to fuel, insurance and labour contracts are up. Meanwhile, revenues are down.

The result? A projected 5.6 per cent budget hike. That’s $7 million more than the current year. Taxpayers, having been conditioned over many years to expect modest increases, won’t like that.

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Budget deliberations are at the earliest stage so things could change, but council has yet to consider its annual “wish list” of pet projects, which could actually add even more.

If there’s public pushback, the council can thank a succession of predecessors for that. Rather than budgeting from a needs perspective, Kamloops councils have budgeted based on what’s considered politically acceptable, and what’s apparent politically acceptable is two per cent.

That changed in 2021 with a pandemic budget of just under one percent but this year it climbed toward five per cent when council couldn’t find ways to offset increases to policing costs.

Two things are of note here. One is confirmation that the days of two-percent magic are over. The other is that it’s time for council to bring in zero-based budgeting. That’s where each year’s budget starts from scratch rather than simply adding to what was there last year.

Under a zero-based approach, every individual expense is challenged and must be justified for each budget, encouraging efficiency and lower cost.

With increases trending toward double what they used to be, zero-based is the way to go.

I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.