File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By James Peters

Two and Out

PETERS: With 5 years of big tax hikes, has the relationship between city hall and Kamloops citizens turned toxic?

Nov 21, 2025 | 12:30 PM

FOR MANY YEARS, Kamloops council would try to keep its annual property tax increases right around the rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

In layperson’s terms, CPI measures the prices of everything households spend money on.

If it’s not reasonable to think our taxes will be flat year after year, it is reasonable for our council to keep those increases in line with what we spend on everything else.

Since the global pandemic hit us, though, things are completely out of whack.

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The 2021 budget was the first one council had to contemplate in the context of pandemic impacts. Council opted to completely batten down the hatches and kept the tax increase under 1 per cent.

Since then, it’s gone the other way. The 2022 tax increase was nearly 5 per cent and it went up from there.

2026 will likely be the fifth year in a row with a tax hike well above the rise in CPI. The eye-popping preliminary number brought forward by staff this week was 10.76 per cent.

At a Committee of the Whole meeting, council understandably told staff to go back and try again.

The City of Kamloops balances its responsibility to provide the services and infrastructure its residents expect with its responsibility not to treat its property owners like revenue faucets that can be opened further and further.

In fact, that’s why we need to stop referring to ourselves as mere ‘taxpayers’ when we grumble about city hall.

Only calling ourselves ‘taxpayers’ certainly draws attention to the fact that we provide the revenue the city uses to do nearly everything it does.

But it sells us short on what city hall is obligated to provide for us.

We don’t require smooth roads, sturdy pipes and reliable garbage pickup only because we pay for them. It’s not purely transactional.

We require them because this is our home and those services are part of our collective ideal of what home means. It’s a relationship between a government and its citizens.

When one party in a relationship constantly takes advantage of the other one, though, whether financially or otherwise, that’s a toxic relationship.

Five years of unfair tax increases looks like a pattern. It won’t be tolerated for long.

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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.