City staff put forward a proposal for a 12.17 per cent tax increase for Victoria property owners as the City of Victoria begins its 2025 budget deliberations.
At a committee of the whole meeting on Thursday, Oct. 24, council members discussed the 2025-2029 draft financial plan, which proposed the double-digit tax increase with the goal of replenishing city reserves and upgrading infrastructure.
"It sounds like it's a combination of, we have under-funded some capital assets over time, but also we're dealing with crazy high inflation and then accelerating costs and degradation timelines due to climate change," said Coun. Jeremy Caradonna
Susanne Thompson, chief financial officer for the city, agreed, saying the lack of investments in capital and reserves in the past has created a difficult financial situation for the city in the coming years.
"Last year we did share some slides around investment or delivery of our roads network and improvements, and so we have been underfunded in some areas for quite some time so it's a little bit of a combination of those things. I think I might have used the words 'perfect storm' last year because it's sort of all coming together all at once now," said Thompson.
The initial proposed tax hike was 12.77 per cent, which Caradonna said was a "somewhat scary" tax lift. Other council members agreed, voting in favour of allocating property tax revenue from new development to the annual capital budget, bringing down the increase by 0.6 per cent.
The early draft budget totaled $365.6 million with capital projects coming in at $94.6 million.
Budget discussions are expected to continue in the coming months, before the final vote expected in April. Victoria residents are invited to provide input at engage.victoria.ca.
