Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto says the city needs to “look under every rock” for savings or new ways of doing business.
To that end, she’s expected to make a motion Thursday for staff to come back in the new year with answers to budget questions ranging from the potential impact of changing tax rates to charging for the city’s bike valet.
“It’s about asking what would happen if we did this, or what’s the information needed to do that,” Alto said in an interview.
Alto said the city is well aware how tight finances are for households in the city and that everyone is facing difficult challenges.
“It’s our responsibility to try and look under every rock we can to see whether or not we can actually make this any better.”
The mayor and councillors are asking staff to look at a number of questions, such as the impact of capping property-tax increases at inflation (it’s currently inflation plus one per cent), of ending $100,000 in funding for the Alliance to End Homelessness in the Capital Region after 2024 or reducing funding for the South Island Prosperity Partnership, and of setting industrial property tax rates that are comparable to non-industrial commercial rates.
There are also questions about the impact of accelerating the addition of Indigenous place names on road signs, increasing the tree canopy and reducing expansion plans for the bike-lane network.
The motion also asks that city staff lay out which programs currently being funded by the city should be funded by the provincial or federal governments; what role the city might play in co-ordinating social service providers to minimize competition for limited financial resources; and why the finance and IT departments of the city are facing significant budget increases in 2024 — 11.56 per cent and 17.69 per cent respectively.
Alto said finding answers to these questions could help the city find savings or choose different priorities as it starts to go through the budget process in the spring.
The first draft of the city’s 2024 budget, released last month, suggested there could be a tax increase of 8.37 per cent next year for property owners.
The early draft, which will be tweaked before being adopted in April, includes a $328-million operating budget and $82.6-million capital budget. It would mean a $248 tax increase for the average household and a $640 tax increase for the typical business.
The proposed budget is up $12.33 million from the 2023 version. The bulk of the tax increase is due to inflationary costs, which add 5.86 per cent to the property-tax bill, and the $72-million budget proposed by the Victoria Police Department.
Victoria is responsible for 86.3 per cent of the Victoria police budget, which would add a 2.4 per cent increase to the tax bill if approved.
Alto said the motion should give city staff enough time to report back with answers.
“I wanted to make sure that the public knew at least some of our questions. This isn’t necessarily exhaustive and there’s still the opportunity for people to add things,” she said, noting the budget process involves “a lot of balancing of competing interests and competing priorities and competing expectations from the public. In order to do this, I thought, let’s just be incredibly transparent about it.”
