Salt Spring’s Local Community Commission (LCC) held its second annual presentation on the upcoming year’s budget, offering an opportunity for taxpayers to sound off about 2025’s plans.
The provisional tax requisition for Salt Spring, including its contribution to the Capital Regional Hospital District, is $9.2 million, officials said –– 13.2 per cent above last year. More than half of that –– about $5 million –– is specific to services now delegated to the LCC, such as parks and recreation, transportation and transit, liquid waste, the library and its grants-in-aid program.
But despite a double-digit hike and favourable weather, the gathering Thursday, Jan. 10 was best described as intimate –– with about a half-dozen islanders turning out to the Salt Spring Island Multi Space (SIMS) board room. LCC chair Earl Rook opened the meeting noting that this year’s budget for Salt Spring was examined at breakneck pace, as commissioners first saw the initial provisional budget document in September.
“And we had to get back to them with a [provisional] approval by the end of the day,” chuckled Rook, “so that was a nine-hour meeting. That’s one of the things, process-wise, we have to work on; we need to get ahead of the game, start earlier, and get our input in earlier.”
That pace isn’t set to ease off; the current version of the provisional budget was approved in late October by the broader Capital Regional District (CRD) board, who plan to finalize their budget by March. To make that deadline, the LCC’s final budget decisions will need to be made at a special meeting on Thursday, Jan. 30 –– so time for community input, should any more be forthcoming, is running out.
Commissioners agreed the presentation Thursday night was mostly a summary of the tax requisition’s contribution towards paying for local and regional services. Not included in those dollars were user charges –– like pool entrance fees, which commissioners have said would be rising slightly –– or grant funding; the idea Thursday was to present a notion of how much someone’s property taxes might be going up and give the public an opportunity to respond.
To that end, commissioners presented examples of an “average” property tax bill on Salt Spring –– with an average residence valued at just over $1 million. That property’s owner will be paying just under $1,400 in 2025, up from $1,238 last year. As a monthly cost, that taxpayer will be budgeting $117 for CRD services this year, or $14 more each month than in 2024.
“We’re just one part of the total budget for Salt Spring local government,” said Rook. “The other components that play a major role include the Islands Trust, and the improvement districts –– for many of us, the North Salt Spring Waterworks District (NSSWD), and then of course the fire district.”
The Islands Trust has said it anticipates a 7.3 per cent budget increase for local Trust areas next year, with the Salt Spring Fire Protection District planning a 9.9 per cent hike. Ratepayers within NSSWD will not see a parcel tax rate increase in 2025, although some smaller districts will see parcel tax bumps, such as CRD-managed Fulford Water (three per cent) and Beddis Water (10.8 per cent).
Amounts for schools, policing and other provincial government services in a “rural” area are also part of the overall property tax mix.
For the LCC, its jump in tax requisition was largely driven by familiar factors, according to CRD director Gary Holman –– such as inflationary pressures and salary costs.
“Increases for CRD staff are in the four to five per cent range,” said Holman. “All local governments are competing for competent staff, and part of that competition results in negotiated wage and salary increases.”
In addition, the creation of a new senior-level general manager position –– while shared between the three electoral areas of Salt Spring, the Southern Gulf Islands and Juan de Fuca –– contributes to that, although commissioners agreed having someone with Salt Spring’s interests “at the table” in the CRD’s senior staff operations would be of enormous benefit to islanders.
Other major factors the LCC cited for the requisition increase included re-opening the pool at the Rainbow Recreation Centre on Sundays, some replenishing of infrastructure reserves exhausted during the start of the pandemic, increasing the allocation to the library to help offset staff costs –– as volunteerism there declines –– and more dollars for local transit.
Salt Spring’s transit system has long been a point of pride, commissioners said, but as ridership has returned to pre-Covid levels, BC Transit’s costs have risen as well, easily outpacing what might be recouped through fares.
“Now BC Transit pays half of our [transit] costs,” said LCC member Gayle Baker, “so they do support us very well. But I’m not sure there’s much we can do when they up some of their costs.”
“They’re facing similar [inflationary and wage] pressures,” said Holman. “The province has said that they will have funding to expand transit within B.C. –– not in 2025, but in 2026 –– but there’s going to be competition for those funds.”
The full CRD budget is online at getinvolved.crd.bc.ca/2025-financial-plan, with copies available to view at the CRD’s local administration office at 121 McPhillips Ave. in Ganges.