Prince George City Council’s first budget meeting for 2025 is in the books.
The proposed budget comes with a tax increase of 5.83 per cent.
That number could change, as City Council will consider several enhancements during Wednesday’s meeting, and Council may make cuts or add things to the budget at their discretion.
At today’s (Monday) meeting, City Manager Walter Babicz and Director of Finance and IT Services Kris Dalio presented first with an overview of the tax levy and city infrastructure. The City’s Communications Manager, Julie Rogers, also presented on the public engagement done on budget.
“The current local government fiscal framework relies heavily on property taxes as the main source of revenue,” Babicz said.
“With municipal budgets impacted by inflation, municipalities are being asked to do more to address the housing crisis and other challenges, but don’t share in the revenue growth that provincial and federal governments receive.”
Babicz added municipalities are required to adopt five-year operating and capital financial plans, which are required to be balanced under provincial legislation.
Babicz also spoke on the geographic size and infrastructure of Prince George.
“The geographic size of Prince George and our infrastructure was based on the city having more than 200,000 people by now,” he explained.
“Until our city population grows, together with our tax base, we’re likely to continue to have challenges maintaining all of our infrastructure.”
Dalio also noted municipalities have a “different basket of goods” than consumers.
“Municipalities deal in a lot of goods that isn’t in the [consumer price index] basket, we deal in things like asphalt for roads, or constructions costs,” he explained.
“We’ve had big increases to police, fire and bylaw over the last few years to manage unhoused populations, and these are things consumers don’t feel in their day-to-day basket of goods.”
He added the “industry” municipalities are in is inflating at a higher rate than the consumer price index.
The City’s tax levy is made up of four individual levies:
- General (operating) – provides the operating funding for all City service categories with the exceptions of Off-Street Parking, Snow, Solid Waste, Sewer, Water and District Energy.
- Snow Control (operating and capital) – funds the full scope of costs associated with providing the City’s snow control service.
- Road Rehabilitation (capital) – created in 2004, and funds the reinvestments needs of the City’s transportation network.
- General Infrastructure Reinvestment Fund (capital) – created in 2013 to start closing the gap between the reinvestment required and the funding available to maintain the City’s existing Civic Facilities.
These increases were proposed for 2025:
In terms of the Snow Control Levy, Dalio said it’s hard to predict how much snow the City will get within a year.
“You sometimes have lighter years of volume, sometimes heavier, sometimes you get them back to back on weekends and holidays, and the cost of removal goes up because of that,”
“There’s no exact science to this, what we try and do is try and see an average of what we’ve been seeing over the last several years and map out what staff and contractors we think we need for what we believe is an average snowfall year, and again.”
Dalio said they have contractors on retainer, so they’re prepared for snow even if snow doesn’t come. He added there’s also a reserve if the snowfall year is particularly bad.
For the Road Rehabilitation levy, Dalio said they try to budget to do 50 lane kilometres of roads each year.
“$6.7 million was what we believed that it would cost to do that in 2024,”
“With the cost of asphalt, labour and fleet going up, we think it’s now going to be $7 million for 2025, again to do 50 lane kilometres.”
Dalio added the General Infrastructure Reinvestment Fund can help replace infrastructure so the City doesn’t have to borrow for everything. This
“We’ve been adding one per cent to the levy at the end of each budget discussion to start setting aside for these assets,”
“I think it’s the most important financial decision this Council made, was doing that, it’s so important and I really hope that it continues to the point that we can have enough set aside to manage all the assets we all rely on to deliver the services we expect.”
While no concrete decisions were made today, City Council heard reports and presentations from city staff and organizations who are in service agreements with the City.
City Council also went through the 2025-2029 Capital Plan, as well as budgets for several city departments and service categories:
Service Agreements:
Corporate Management:
Administrative Services:
- Police Protection
- Fire and Rescue Services
- Emergency ProgramsÂ
- Bylaw Services
- Off-Street Parking
- Communications
- Intergovernmental Relations
Councillor Kyle Sampson said he would be proposing cuts to Human Resources, Emergency Programs, and Bylaw Services at Wednesday’s meeting.
Budget meetings will resume on Wednesday at 1:00 pm.
During that session, City Council will continue to review the budgets for the different departments under the umbrellas of Civic Facilities and Events, Planning and Development, and Finance and IT Services.
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