Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) directors started grappling with the 2016 budget this week.
Round 1 deliberations opened Feb. 9, and SCRD chair Garry Nohr said he’s not expecting too many difficult decisions, but he acknowledged, “It’s going to be a struggle to keep it [the tax rate] low for some areas.”
“Most of the material is pretty straightforward,” Nohr said. “A lot [of departments] have, in this last year, come under budget, and we’ll be asking to put the money in reserves or stabilization of a budget next year.”
Heading into Round 1 there was still some uncertainty about the impact of property assessments. Worries that a reassessment for Howe Sound Pulp and Paper would create a hole of around $197,000 were countered by news that assessments were up for private managed forest land and independent power projects. However, finance department staff now say BC Assessment overstated the private managed forest land number, and they’re still correcting the errors.
Much of the pressure on the 2016 budget is coming from inflation, increases under a new collective agreement with Unifor, a cost of living increase for director remuneration, and higher contract costs and BC Hydro rates.
Nohr said other big-ticket items are a $125,000 shortfall in BC Transit funding, and water-related projects.
“The biggest thing we will be looking at is probably the Chapman Lake drawdown, which could be up to $500,000, but that would be paid over a length of time,” Nohr said.
According to Nohr, money to pay for drilling wells for a possible groundwater source to supplement the supplies at Chapman and the other lakes used by the SCRD system will also be part of the budget deliberations, although the money might not be needed until 2017.
And, as always, there are requests from community groups. Nohr estimates they’re at well over $100,000.
“We’re going to have to look at, in the future, putting so much money aside and letting people in the community decide where it should be spent, because of the asks and the needs of so many different organizations,” he said. “We’re going to be looking very strongly at asks that probably our provincial government should be handling. So that’ll be the hard part of the budget for some people.”
Directors heard one of those requests right at the start of Round 1. The Seniors Planning Table that spun off from the Progress Plan is looking for $34,806 from the SCRD (as well as a combined $25,194 from Gibsons and Sechelt).
Nohr moved to have that request deferred to Round 2 while SCRD staff investigate whether the program can get provincial money. There’s been a similar request from A GP for Me to fund the patient navigator.
Nohr said he’s not expecting a lot of debate over the funding for the new economic development agency, because it’s already happened during the discussions around a memorandum of understanding between the local governments. The SCRD’s share of the $300,000 total works out to $163,716.
Nohr said he’s hoping people will come out to see the budget deliberations, which are being held at the Field Road offices and are open to the public. “I think people should come up and see how we’re holding the line on the strategic plan,” he said.
Round 2 is set for March 7, 8, and 9, with meetings starting at 9:30 a.m.
