Early proposal for Victoria has $365.6 million operating budget and $94.6 million capital budget.
A first draft of the City of Victoria’s 2025 budget suggests property owners could be on the hook for a 12.17 per cent tax increase next year, the largest for the city in more than a decade.
A number of councillors conceded the figures are frightening and most suggested they would be bringing solutions to council over the next several weeks to trim the tax rise to something more palatable.That process started in a small way Thursday with council voting 8-1 to immediately reduce the tax increase to 12.17 per cent from the 12.77 per cent initially projected in the draft budget.
And while there was support around the council table, a number of his colleagues suggested it was just a public relations exercise. Hammond said if council wanted to send a signal it ought to be that council is “going to come up with a wide variety of things that are going to reduce the tax lift.” City deputy manager and chief financial officer Susanne Thompson said the fact is the scale and cost of proposed capital investments is significantly higher than in recent years due to increased costs for everything and climate change having a more severe impact on infrastructure than anticipated.
The early draft of the budget includes the Victoria police budget, which is seeking $79.14 million this year, an increase of $7 million compared with last year. Victoria’s share of that budget would be $68.3 million with Esquimalt paying the balance.
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