By Cheryl Jahn

F & A looks at 3.5 percent to 4 percent

Dec 5, 2022 | 4:16 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Looking at maintaining City services will cost taxpayers a 7.22 percent tax hike. That involves, but not exclusively, a hike to the snow removal budget of $400,000. With something as simple as a hike in asphalt alone from $116 dollars per ton to $141 per ton, Administration has suggested a road rehab budget hike of another $600,000. The 7.22 is not surprising, given today’s economy

“You know, I thought it would actually come back quite a bit higher by about 80 basis points,” says Cori Ramsay, newly-appointed Chair of the Finance and Audit Committee. “I was concerned that it would come in around eight. So I am shocked that it has come in at 7.22, especially considering we did have a 0% rate over COVID. So, you know, if you take that zero and the 7.22 to an average it out, it is I think while 7.22 is not palatable, it’s understandable.”

Several options were presented to offset, such as using the remainder of the Safe Restart money, of which the City received just over six million dollars.

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“In 2021 and 2022, Council used some of this money to help lower their tax levy number and they can do that again this year,” explains Kris Dalio, the Director of Finance. “It’s just that you build a base budget based on a one-time grant with no ongoing source of funding. Eventually, the grant runs out and you have to replace that funding with your tax levy funding. And so that’s one of the deferral options they can use.”

The other options for deferral are to draw from the snow reserve and/or the transit reserve.

Committee members bandied about the option of a zero percent tax hike. But that would translate into cuts to the tune of eight and a half million dollars.

“To give you an idea, we have a $118 million tax levy,” says Dalio. “This is a massive, massive decrease to our services and most of our services. They don’t even have eight and a half million in them. You would have to start looking at the big players to find that kind of money. Our biggest expenses that we have are police protection, fire protection, snow removal, roads that the stuff that I believe are the real core responsibilities of a municipality.”

But the zero percent wasn’t on the horizon, with the Committee ultimately sending Adminsitration back to look at what a three and a half to a four percent tax hike will look at.

And the next time the numbers will be looked at is in January.

“There is going to be an opportunity for public consultation and deliberation and I really encourage members of the public to come to those sessions and share with council before we’re setting the rate that is of the utmost importance so that we know, you know, we are taking the citizen budget results into account seeing that,” says Ramsay.

However, one message was loud and clear committee-wide, a 7.22 percent tax hike is not on the table.