City To Debate Property Tax Increase

City residents and businesses are facing a possible half percent hike to municipal property taxes after failing to reach budget targets for a second year in a row. And without spending cuts, that tax rate is set to continue into the next budget cycle.

First reading of the new property tax bylaw is expected to be heard at Tuesday council meeting with staff recommending councillors bump property taxes up to 6.1 per cent across the board from the 5.6 per cent rate set as part of the 2025-26 budget.

This will be the second time since that budget passed in December 2024 that councillors will need to deal with a more  than half-million-dollar budget shortfall with last year’s gap covered by reserves.

“Our revenues are not increasing at the same rate our expenses are,” stated Coun. Stu Young at last week’s corporate services committee meeting where councillors were first briefed on the situation. “That’s a major problem.”

The city’s property tax collection benchmark is just under $100 million.

While the 2025 shortfall of $520,000 was covered by municipal reserves, those expenses continued into 2026 and grew to $550,000, corporate services committee members heard last week.

“Next year, if you’re looking at what is our tax revenue required to cover our costs, you’re already behind a million dollars now from 2025 and 2026. It compounds so now you’re a million dollars behind in revenue coming into 2027,” stated Lola Barta, interim city CFO during last week’s committee meeting. “It’s cumulative over the years so every time you don’t increase that tax base, it impacts a future year.”

She added that situation can be mitigated through tax base growth but that isn’t happening.

City staff are recommending against a chamber of commerce recommendation to cut non-residential tax rates by 2 per cent as that would shift the tax burden onto residential properties.

While Young indicated the situation will need in-depth discussions amongst elected officials, the clock is ticking to make a decision with tax notices required to be sent out in early May.

Council held an in-camera committee of the whole meeting on Monday in which the property tax item was discussed.

The debate on the possible property tax increase comes six months following the municipal election in which several of the current councillors campaigned on reduciing the rates.