As the long and tedious process of creating next year’s budget begins, the City of Vitoria has proposed a 12.17% property tax hike for its residents.
The money generated by this property tax hike would contribute to the rising costs of running the city, such as funding ambitious infrastructure projects.
The proposed tax increase could generate around $22 million.
Additionally, the City says they need to put some money back into their reserves, which they have been needing to draw from for ongoing projects and initiatives.
Every year, each City department requests an increase to their funds and in the past, city council has opted to try to keep those increases in line with the rate of inflation.
They do this to avoid raising property taxes astronomically, as they know affordability is an issue for many households.
This year, VicPD is requesting an increase to their funding by nearly 10%, while the going Canadian inflation rate is currently around 2%.
VicPD is requesting a total of around $79.14 million. This is a 7.07 million increase compared to last year.
Victoria’s share of only 86.33% of the police budget because Esquimalt covers the remainder—prompting a tax increase of 3.34% for Victoria residents.
While the proposed tax rate increase is still objectively high at 12.17%, City staff initially proposed a hike of 12.77%.
Council was quick to vote in favour of lowering this rate when staff proposed this number during their budget discussions in the committee of the whole meeting on Thursday, October 24th.
In the meeting, several councillors expressed they already have ideas on how to cut the budget in order to lower the proposed tax rate increase.
This was just the beginning of the long and arduous process that comes with putting together a city budget for council.
The budget will see many changes as councillors debate priorities and how the City should be spending money responsibly to ease the property tax burden on residents.
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