10.1 per cent tax hike passes vote in View Royal

View Royal passed a 10.1 per cent tax increase in its 2023 budget during the town council meeting on Tuesday (May 2).

Mayor Sid Tobias said council had been hoping to keep the figure below double-digits but said there wasn’t more that could be cut without impacting services. Amendments to the budget from the one presented on April 18 added to the tax hike a little, notably budgeting extra money for the hiring of a new administrative assistant for the RCMP who will start in January.

Despite the higher tax increase – Tobias said he’d hoped to avoid any hikes as mayor – he said he hadn’t heard much pushback from residents.

“It seems that people are happy with the level of service they’re getting in View Royal. But the challenge is those can’t be at 1980s prices, because unfortunately, the cost of labour and even finding labour to fill positions is increasingly difficult to do. So I think overall, the comments were not perhaps as skewed as I would have thought they might have been. There was some understanding as well as the fiscal realities and the citizens that did comment on it.”

A town staff report estimates the hike will mean the average homeowner will have to pay $200 more in taxes, based on the average residential property being valued at $930,207 in 2022, and $1,046,317 in 2023.

Tobias added he was giving back the nearly $10,000 pay bump that had been voted in by the previous council for the mayor, and says he intends to do so in the future. He also noted council voted to trim the number of conferences it attends in a year.

Council was scheduled to vote on whether to approve the budget during Tuesday’s (April 18) regular council meeting but deferred the decision because a couple of amendments were made.

As well as the additional RCMP staffer, other changes to the financial plan include cutting the money budgeted for the public safety building’s landscaping from $55,000 to $35,000 and adding $40,000 to the amount budgeted for building inspection services, as well as adding the $4.66 million from Growing Communities Fund grant from the province into a reserve fund.

READ MORE: View Royal expecting 9.4% tax hike as budget hit by rise in labour costs