Amid protests over a record-high property tax hike, Langford council approved a five-year financial plan on Monday to deal with rising costs either unforeseen or not budgeted for in past years.
Taxpayers in the growing West Shore city will see their property taxes rise 12.41% this year, with projections of 11.68% in 2024 and 9.5%, 9% and 8.44% in subsequent years. The plan and the tax rate are expected to go to the final bylaw stage at the next council meeting, prior to the Community Charter’s May 15 deadline.
It’s a sign of the growing pains of a city now reaching 50,000 people and in need of more police officers and firefighters, additional city staff and a new RCMP headquarters — not to mention record inflation and a swimming-pool subsidy that has doubled to nearly $2 million a year.
Council noted that taxes in previous years had been kept artificially low, offset by drawing from municipal reserves.
Langford residents still pay less than the average for municipalities in the Capital Regional District, but it’s a tough pill for some to swallow. Property taxes for the average home in the municipality were $1,858 last year, versus $3,189 for Saanich, $3,322 for Victoria and $4,638 for Oak Bay.
City hall has been picketed by protesters for weeks and the outcry has been heard at council meetings since March, with residents saying the increased tax bill could be their tipping point amid record inflation that has pushed living expenses through the roof.
“This [tax hike] tells me that my landlord is going to raise my rent, and I can’t afford to have my rent up any more than it is now,” a Langford senior who lives on a pension told council on Monday. “We love it here, but we will leave and [other people] will leave, and when people leave, businesses leave.”
Gerry Patterson, a Langford taxpayer for 50 years, said the tax hike will hurt young people. “They’re killing themselves trying to buy a house. They finally do and they’re living on the edge and now you’re going to raise taxes … they’re going to lose that house and everything they put down.”
But council defended its staff’s work on what Coun. Colby Harder called the most open budget deliberations in its history. “This has been a hard budget process, but it’s also been the most transparent and it will provide the service to our community that it really needs now,” Harder said.
Coun. Lillian Szpak, the only survivor of the previous council under mayor Stew Young and first elected in 2002, said no one wants to see a big lift in taxes, but this is “an honest budget.”
Szpak said more police officers and firefighters as well as a new RCMP headquarters are “non-negotiable” items, and the extra $$950,000 subsidy to the YM/YWCA — which she said is the largest budget increase — has to be paid.
“These are large-ticket items that are reflective of the growth of our community,” Szpak said. “This council is being accountable to the community.”
Coun. Mary Wagner noted that the community is growing and changing and complex. “For all the people who’ve been talking about how many years they’ve lived here … I’ve lived here all my life, it’s different now. We’ve grown up. We’re complicated. We need more services, [but] we will still have lower taxes than most of the region.”
The city is adding four RCMP officers this year at a cost of $700,000, nearly 2% of the budget, to bring the police-population ratio to the mandated 1:750.
Nine firefighters are being added at a cost of $456,000. Those increases were agreed to by council in 2017 with the idea that they would use volunteers to keep pace with growth, but that never came to fruition.
A master plan in early 2022 recommended the addition of 27 paid firefighters, but to limit the impact on taxpayers, staff recommended hiring nine firefighters in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The YM/YWCA subsidy of nearly $2 million — an extra $950,000, representing a 2.5% tax increase — was one item the city wasn’t expecting.
The YM/YWCA had said it would have to close the pool and fitness facility at Westhills, which has lost $10 million since opening in 2016, by the end of the month if the city didn’t double its annual subsidy.
Langford is now considering buying the facility, using grant money and borrowing to fund the purchase as well as initial design work for the new RCMP headquarters on the West Shore.
Langford is assuming the lion’s share of the cost of the proposed $81-million RCMP building facility — about $56 million — which will serve Colwood, Langford, Metchosin and the Highlands.
The city received $16.4 million from the province’s Growing Communities Fund for infrastructure projects, and council last month told staff to use about $12 million on the purchase of the YMCA building, design work for the new RCMP detachment and augmenting its capital asset management.
The city will borrow $30 million for the YMCA purchase and $50 million for the new RCMP building, with a payback plan over five years that will bump property taxes by 1% this year and 3.5% in each of 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027.
“The previous mayor and council had always planned to borrow the full amount of money for the RCMP building,” said Wagner. “They didn’t save up for it over previous years and now it’s time to start paying these bills.”
She said in the interim, Langford will also have to come up with some extra space to house additional RCMP officers and staff while the new headquarters is being built. “We can’t go back in time — we’re stuck where we are,” said Wagner. “We will find them space.”
Council also took $1.7 million out of general reserves to offset some of the tax increase this year.
Langford staff noted the city’s portion of the property tax bill is about 49%, with the remainder collected on behalf of the province for schools (30%), the CRD (11.69%), B.C. Transit (4.82%) and Capital Region Hospital District (3.27%).
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