Property taxes are going up in Burnaby, but not by as much as expected.
On Monday, council adopted its 2014-2018 Financial Plan, which contains a property tax increase of 1.97 per cent. However, that’s a sharp drop from the projected 2.47-per-cent increase that council was looking at in the winter with this year’s provisional financial plan.
In December, Coun. Dan Johnston noted the budget was pretty tight, but that there was still some potential “to realize some additional opportunities” before the budget was adopted earlier this week.
“We sat down twice over the last nine months with our staff and identified some various ways we could be a little more efficient in what we did,” said Johnston, who serves as chair of the city’s finance and audit committees.
Johnston said revenue generated by developments in Brentwood and Metrotown did the most to lessen the size of the tax increase for residents.
For the average home valued at $660,847, residents will pay an extra $26.82 per year, for a total of $1,549.22 annually, according to the city’s finance director, Denise Jorgenson.
Johnston added that the city adjusted spending on a number of its programs, but noted that they didn’t have to make any significant cuts.
“We identified some programs that weren’t meeting the public’s need anymore so they were refined in a way that we didn’t have to spend as much money on them,” he said.
Last year, Johnston raised concerns that a 1.75-per-cent wage increase for city workers in 2014, outlined in a collective agreement, put strain on the budget and could lead to a hiring freeze for the city.
While the city did scale back on hiring for a time, Johnston said staff were creative in delegating responsibilities in their efforts to offset the $1.9 million spike in the budget caused by the wage increase.
“We directed staff not to hire anybody until they rationalized the roles,” he said. “Some of the positions that were anticipated were for things like the new rec centre, which needed staff to fully function.
“There were a couple of new roles that we either delayed or retooled them into other positions so that they weren’t necessarily full positions.”
