The Town of Gibsons' budget for 2009 is nearing completion, and residents can expect to see no increase in the municipal portion of their property taxes and no visible cuts to services.
"Basically the council was very cognizant of the financial circumstances everybody is in this year, and we just made a conscious decision that we are not going to add to the burden of the taxpayers in the Town of Gibsons," said Coun. Wayne Rowe. "Our staff has been terrific in being able to find areas for us to meet that objective."
Rowe is the chair of the corporate services committee, which has been charged with handling the financial management of the Town.
The zero per cent increase did not come easily. Rowe said the Town has faced challenges with dipping revenues from permitting. In 2008 the planning department had $63,000 in revenue from permits, most of that from developers. The Town is now predicting less than half that amount for 2009.
"The revenue side of things is challenging. There's no question about that," Rowe said.
Some help from the provincial government was also key to freezing the tax rate, according to director of finance Ian Poole.
The province announced changes in early March to the way it would dole out unconditional grant funds to municipalities through the strategic community investment fund. The result was Gibsons received essentially an advance on the next two years of funding that it was not counting on."We took that $60,000 and added it into our program to help compensate, otherwise we would have been looking at cutting back some of our expenses in order to keep that zero per cent tax increase," Poole said.
Rowe said the Town will also be reducing the business tax ratio to 3.75 per cent in the hopes of stimulating business in Gibsons.
"We're moving in that direction. We're trying to reduce that ratio to make the Town more attractive to business, quite frankly. That's a policy council is pursuing," Rowe said.
Poole said services for parks and roads will be "business as usual," adding provincial grants will also allow the Town to take on a few capital projects including road work on Burns Road and Gower Point Road, updating water mains, landscaping at the Gibsons and Area Community Centre and starting the aquifer mapping project.
First reading for the budget and its associated bylaws is scheduled to take place at the April 7 council meeting.
The Town is holding a public open house on the budget Wednesday, April 15, at municipal hall.
The budget is expected to pass at the first council meeting in May.
