When the third Saturday in October rolls around next year, voters may see a record-high number of new names on their Islands Trust ballots — and it’s likely that election will have come on the heels of a record-high Islands Trust budget.
While technically neither current trustees nor potential candidates need to make a final decision until 36 days before election day — set for Oct. 17, 2026 — the committee tasked with financial planning for the land use authority has to make its spending recommendations far sooner. Trustees on the Financial Planning Committee (FPC) met Wednesday, Oct. 22 to take their first long look at next year’s draft budget, finding a bottom line of nearly $12 million that reflects an 11.5 per cent tax hike on most islands — 33.8 per cent, if you own property on Bowen Island.
Those increases — Bowen Island municipal trustee Judith Gedye called her island’s draft number “heart-stopping” — are larger than a projected 6.7 per cent increase in planned spending, an incongruity financial and employee services director Julia Mobbs laid at the feet of reduced revenue from external sources, like grants and investment income, and internal funding, like surplus and reserve transfers. Those are projected to come in next year 43 per cent and 58 per cent lower, respectively.
“When we have [that reduction], it’s felt the same way as an increase in expenses,” said Mobbs. “That’s why we have some additional pressures for tax burden in the budget.”
Those numbers aren’t set in stone; staff offered a first-look set of potential reductions that could lower spending by almost three per cent. FPC members so far indicated they would be sending modest recommendations to Trust Council.
“All the other committees get to have fun and create projects and build the organization,” chuckled Denman Island trustee David Graham. “And this committee has the duty of slashing everything — trying to reduce the amount of taxes being asked of the people that live on these beautiful islands.”
“We’ve got fixed costs, and we’ve got all of our wish lists,” said Gedye. “I don’t know if we can merrily go along with $12 million. It’s a very hard discussion that we have to have.”
The FPC forwarded a now-familiar recommendation to reduce the number of in-person Trust Council meetings — this time suggesting that the body hold just two of them face-to-face. There are four currently scheduled, plus a fifth meeting planned as part of the process of onboarding new trustees after the election. The proposed budget for all five is $135,000, with one already planned as a virtual meeting; each in-person meeting should be budgeted at $30,000, according to a staff report.
The committee also voted to recommend Trust Council not advance several projects that aren’t supported by staff resources in the budget, including Galiano Island’s targeted OCP review and any such new minor projects — at least until staffing levels within the regional planning team were at least at 75 per cent.
It also narrowly voted to ask the Islands Trust Conservancy board whether it could put a portion of its private donations toward supporting any of that body’s 2026/27 budget requests — specifically noting a $1.15-million anonymous gift it received this summer.
And trustees are preparing for a higher-than-typical number of representatives on Islands Trust Council not seeking another term — possibly more than half, according to Lasqueti Island trustee Tim Peterson.
Peterson was responding to a related budget line item: new laptop computers, both for incoming trustees and for others with machines that have been damaged or are reaching end-of-life. That business case calls for $32,400 to cover 15 new “commercial grade” laptops — $1,660 each to purchase and $500 apiece for Microsoft Office 2024 licences, according to a staff report. That total includes support and device tracking to help trustees manage what has become a significant electronic workload, and facilitate meetings held remotely.
“My rough assessment, based on discussions with trustees, is that we’re probably going to have a very significant turnover of trustees come next election,” said Peterson. “To me, the question is, in fact, is 15 enough?”
There are 26 trustees serving terms across the Islands Trust area; more than 15 deciding not to seek another term would be well above recent years’ turnover numbers. Last term’s election saw 12 new trustees seated in 2022, along with 11 incumbents and three former trustees confirmed as either elected or acclaimed. In both 2018 and 2014, 13 election winners were new to the Islands Trust.
Determining the scope or reasoning behind potential high turnover is difficult this far from the election, although publicly expressed moments of frustration among trustees this term have been seemingly more common than in years past, particularly — although not exclusively — among those first elected in 2022. But no trustees have officially announced intentions one way or another. Salt Spring trustee Jamie Harris did say during a particularly animated portion of that island’s June Local Trust Committee meeting he was “not running again,” but has not repeated the remark.
New for this election-year budget is a proposed $32,000 to support holding in-person first meetings of each of the four standing committees and to facilitate training early in the new term, covering topics like meeting procedures and standards of conduct.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I’ve been trying to get our in-person meetings reduced this whole term,” said Graham, “but in this particular case, this [may be] the first year for a very large number of first-time trustees; they need as many opportunities as they can get.”
For the election itself, Mobbs said staff were also anticipating a 50 per cent increase in the cost of holding it, specifically in what’s paid through contracts to regional districts who administer elections in the Trust area. The current budget shows $237,000 in spending for the election, including $212,103 for those regional district contracts, $10,293 in pre-election communications — such as elections advertising and non-resident notice mailings — and $3,500 in professional photographs of new trustees for the Islands Trust’s website post-election.