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By James Peters

City Hall

More upward cost pressures coming to City of Kamloops budget: report to council

Sep 10, 2024 | 6:15 PM

KAMLOOPS — After barely avoiding a double-digit tax increase this year, Kamloops council is eager to find out what factors it will have to consider when it sets the budget for 2025.

Financial Planning and Procurement Manager Dustin Rutsatz provided an overview of the factors council will have to consider with a report at the regular meeting Tuesday (Sept. 10).

On the positive side for the city’s books:

• The post-lockdown return to recreational activities has led to booming revenues for city-owned facilities. Revenues may rise even further if council authorizes fee increases for 2025.
• The city believes it will continue with strong building permits numbers in the coming years.
• Fuel prices are expected decline in the short term. Every one cent change in fuel prices results in a $12,000 budgetary impact, positively or negatively.
• Contracts for two major City of Kamloops employee groups — CUPE 900 and IAFF 913 — are already set for 2025, providing early budgetary certainty.

But on the negative side:

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• Political uncertainty is generally viewed in a negative light. The United States and B.C. are both holding elections before the end of 2024 and the stability of the Canadian government has recently been thrown into doubt.
• Even though most inflation metrics are easing, prices of the construction materials demanded by the City of Kamloops have remained more inflated than those of consumer goods.
• An increase in BC Hydro rates for the next two years has already been okayed by the BC Utilities Commission.
• The B.C. carbon tax is expected to triple by 2030. Under the current scheduled rate increases, the City of Kamloops will be paying more than $1 million annually by 2028.
• A shortfall of labour predicted in the coming years is predicted to make costs fluctuate.

Asked to summarize, Rutsatz said he won’t nail down a ballpark proposed tax increase for 2025 this early in the budgetary cycle.

“It would be fair to say there are some [costs] that are going down,” said Rutsatz. “It would also be fair to say there is more pressure on costs going up than down, so those are the things we are looking to mitigate to see what we can do about them.”

Council will need to pass a provisional budget before the end of the year to set rates for utility services such as sewer, water and solid waste collection.