Burnaby council approved a budget that will put a 2.47 per cent hike on property taxes at Monday night's meeting.
The expenditures for the 2013 operating and capital plans total $526,340,610. A staff report states that this year's budget focuses on immediate needs for current operations, improvements and services.
"This is much less than anticipated for 2013," Coun. Dan Johnston said at Monday's meeting, adding the property tax increase of 2.47 per cent was down from the projected 2.99 per cent.
According to B.C. Assessment, as of March assessed residential property values went up by 2.05 per cent and the average property in Burnaby is worth $679,068. In 2012, average home property values rose by 10.71 per cent.
For a single family dwelling, based on the average property value, means a yearly tax bill of $2,115 - which is a $71 increase.
For a strata property, based on an average value of $372,054, it means an annual charge of $834.
"Every year is challenging, and this year more so than ever," Coun. Colleen Jordan noted. "Especially for our staff because there's lots of needs of the community and lots of things that people would like to do, but we have to work within a tight framework. Unlike other levels of government, we can't run a deficit if we wanted to ... This is why we are having a tax increase, but a modest one, I would say."
Coun. Sav Dhaliwal said despite it being a small tax increase, it will still impact low-income residents.
"Regardless of the size of the increase, this will be difficult for many, many citizens to afford any increase - and it's understandable," he said. "Property taxes are traditionally going up every year."
Dhaliwal also said the way the property tax system has been designed needs to be re-examined because it isn't sufficient to keep up with the city's growing infrastructure costs.
Last year's $2.3 million surplus and its $500,000 library surplus were used to keep property taxes as low as possible, according to the financial plan.
"The city is facing cost increases that surpass the annual rate of inflation of 1.5 per cent," the plan states. "Expenditure increases include collective bargaining agreements, operational and inflationary increases and provisions for new services."
This year's financial plan is zeroing in on safety and security, maintaining and improving existing infrastructure for roads and community facilities and new services.
More fire and police services represent a $6.4 million cost increase to the budget, as does a $1.2 million increase in operating costs for the new Edmonds Community Centre.
The city's garbage disposal costs rose by 50 per cent from residential toters from 2008 to 2012, which led to an increase in garbage disposal fees. The amount of revenue generated from it is $2.45 million.
Operating expenditures total $388,381,165, with parks, recreation and cultural services taking the biggest slice with 17.4 per cent, followed by 15.3 per cent going to general government services, 13.8 per cent for public works, 13.4 per cent for police and the rest for utilities, fire, solid waste, the library and the planning and building department.
Fifty-five per cent of the operating revenue came from tax levies and also user fees, utilities, inspections, donations and grants, investment income and the surplus.
The city's revenue from property rentals is $8.9 million.
Council also approved $213,517,650 from the Burnaby rates bylaw to provide funding for the 2013 budget.
Provincial law requires the financial plan be adopted before May 15.
Council also approved a staff recommendation to bring down a capital reserves expenditure bylaw in the amount of $3.7 million to replace the city's 33-year-old custom property tax software platform.
"The property tax system has its own limited reporting functionality, which requires manual intervention, and is dependent upon detailed knowledge of the system," the staff report states. "The new solution will be integrated within (SAP's Enterprise Business Application System) revenue sub ledger where revenue analytics for all the city's revenue streams will be available."
The new system will allow citizens to view all the business activities they conduct with the city through one user portal, which will be connected to the city's website, www.burnaby.ca.
