Gibsons council is moving forward with a 2018 budget that now includes a new project – drawing water from the aquifer for Zone 3, which is currently supplied by Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD).
The Zone 3 project was announced last month as part of an initiative to help the SCRD deal with the stresses on the Chapman Lake system.
The Town is also pitching joint watershed and groundwater management involving all local governments.
The draft budget presented by director of finance David Douglas at a special committee meeting March 28 earmarks $175,000 this year for preliminary work, with a further $787,500 and $826,900 in spending in 2019 and 2020.
Council voted March 20 to add the Zone 3 project to the draft budget for consideration, but Mayor Wayne Rowe was not at that meeting and said he wanted to make sure councillors fully understood the financial implications.
“I want to be very cautious about what we’re committing ourselves to,” he said.
Councillors Jeremy Valeriote and Stafford Lumley both noted that the Zone 3 project would have a quick payback. “We may have to borrow or use surpluses – but at the end of a short period, once we start Zone 3 supplying ourselves, the payback is pretty rapid … and the increase into reserves would be quite substantial as well,” Lumley said.
Director of infrastructure services Dave Newman told the committee that a planned revision of the development cost charges (DCC) bylaw will include making the Zone 3 project DCC-eligible.
Douglas also gave councillors a series of snapshots showing how the anticipated 4.5 per cent overall tax increase would impact various properties.
His sampling showed that in some cases the tax bills will actually go down as a result of new properties on the assessment rolls and changes in assessed values.
The example of a home assessed at $676,000 shows a reduction of $29.55 in the tax bill and an overall drop of $2.03 when the five per cent increase in water and sewer fees is included.
A high-value example – assessed at $1.78 million – would see its bill go up by about $212.
None of the examples included the SCRD, hospital or school taxes that Gibsons property owners also have to pay.
The final budget is expected to go to council at its April 17 meeting.
