Property taxes for Sechelt homeowners are officially increasing by 9.7 per cent this year now that council has adopted its budget bylaw.
The increase was unanimously approved as part of the budget at a May 12 special council meeting, as was a 17 per cent increase to sewer user fees.
For a residential property valued at $638,517, the tax bill will rise $128, while the sewer user fee increase translates to $85 on the average residential property bill.
Almost half of this year’s $21-million capital budget is covered through grants – $9 million in total.
In a release, the district listed a number of initiatives covered in the budget, including hiring six full-time and one part-time staff “to help manage our growing operations, projects, and assets,” a Hackett Park playground, an operations building on Dusty Road, a washroom at Snickett Park, more than $2 million in road resurfacing, the airport runway expansion and improvements to Rockwood Lodge.
Wastewater system improvements have also been covered, including a lift station, manhole replacements and a chemical storage facility for the Water Resource Centre.
A new website is coming to the district, too.
COVID grants
The district received $2.5 million in COVID-19 restart funds through a federal-provincial safe restart funding agreement, and at a committee-of-the-whole meeting on May 12 council considered moving ahead with a grant program for charities and non-profits using $100,000 from that source.
Money would be used for the delivery of “core community services for vulnerable populations,” according to a draft policy.
Staff suggested a total fund of $50,000 with $5,000 as the maximum grant amount per organization, and organizations would have to report how they used the money, with council picking the recipients.
During discussion, Coun. Matt McLean asked that the fund be increased to $100,000 to increase the minimum allocation to accommodate organizations with larger projects.
Coun. Alton Toth spoke against the suggestion, preferring to keep the grant program small.
Staff also raised the requirement in the draft policy that organizations would be limited to one application each, which could pose a barrier for organizations with multiple programs.
Councillors voted to increase the fund to $100,000 and to continue refining the policy at a future committee meeting.
