Like many capital regions municipalities, the Esquimalt town council met this week to consider ways the 2026 budget could be cut in order to bring down the proposed property tax increase.
The Township’s early draft budget called for a 13% increase.
Property taxes make up about 51% of the Township’s revenue, and higher costs are driving the need for additional revenue.
Additional pressures on the budget include VicPD, inflation, employee wages, new staff and infrastructure expenses.
During the committee of the whole meeting on February 9th, staff presented options for council to lower the proposed property tax increase in Esquimalt by cutting certain programs and services from the budget.
Specifically, staff gave council options for a 9% tax increase and a 7% increase through reducing line items from the 2026-2030 Draft Financial Plan.
Staff took a look at all supplemental asks from this year’s budget and identified a number of requests that could be removed.
Some of these included hiring a new fire inspector, enhancements to the recreation centre’s garden, municipal hall blinds and hiring a new senior planner. Cumulatively, these reductions equal around 1% of the proposed tax increase, which would bring the figure down to 11.68%.
Furthermore, potential service reductions that include the crossing guard program, local grants, the municipal newsletter, the advertising budget and more were identified to be reduced.
One notable service cut that was identified was webcasting the weekly council meetings. If this were cut, the Township would potentially not upload the meetings to their website following each meeting.
These cuts make up 4.12% of the tax hike. If these reductions and the cuts from staff requests were implemented, the proposed property tax increase would be reduced to 7.56%.
“This is as low as we’ve been able to get from a staff level,” said the Township staffer presenting these options to council.
“It doesn’t quite achieve the 7% that council had given direction, but we feel as though we’ve done a significant amount of work to get to this point.”
Township Staff added that they did not provide an option for the 9% range, but if council chose to do so, they could identify items staff chose as reductions and add them back into the financial plan.
Staff says the goal for the meeting was to provide council with the space to consider the options given, discuss them and ask any questions they may have.
“I think we have a mandate to keep our property taxes [as] low and affordable as possible, but we have a more important mandate, which is to deliver services that meet the expectations of our community,” said Councillor Tim Morrison.
“The territory that we’re looking at right now is below the expectations, I think… That being said I’m definitely not comfortable with 13%.”
Ultimately, some councillors decided they wanted to add back in some line items that had been identified by staff for reduction and more information was needed on the hiring of a new fire inspector.
Those matters were regarding road design guidelines and the financial impact assessment. If all three were to be added back in, it would lift the tax hike back up to 8.15%.
These matters will be considered as more information is presented to council when budget discussions resume on April 13th.
Property taxes have increased steadily in recent years—6.3% in 2023, 7.7% in 2024, and 9.9% in 2025.
