Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) staff are sharpening their pencils and tightening their belts as round one of this year's budget talks are completed.
John France, chief administrative officer for the SCRD, said this year's budget presents new problems - a number of new projects to fit in while also taking into account usual operating costs.
France said staff will now have to look at what costs can be cut while SCRD directors wrestle with where to make those cuts and how large the tax increase will be.
"Simply put, it's like the perfect storm," France said. "Things are all hitting us at the same time and it's creating this large property tax component increase. I think the board wrestled with it. They've made some cuts and given some direction to go back and look at services."
As of round one of the budget's completion Monday night, SCRD treasurer Joan Merrick's calculations called for a 24.9 per cent increase in property taxes.
Merrick stressed that the regional district taxes are only a portion of what makes up an overall property tax bill in a year and the per cent change in the SCRD's taxes does not translate to an equal change in a homeowner's tax bill.
Both Merrick and France said the 24.9 per cent was likely to fall in the next rounds of budget discussions. Round one budgets tend to be overviews of a total budget before staff start looking for efficiencies, they said.
"Typically what happens is everything gets thrown in there and they start to slice, dice and sort what their priorities are," France said.Last year's budget saw the SCRD going into round two with around 20 per cent and finished the budget in March with a six per cent increase in the SCRD share of taxes.
France said it is far too early to speculate what the final tax increase will be, but it is unlikely it will be as low as last year's six per cent without making drastic cuts to services.
"This is a particularly difficult year and the board is going to have to wrestle with that and what their priorities are. I suspect this is going to be a bigger increase than last year," he said.
Before SCRD staff and the board head into round two of budget talks on Feb. 16, staff will go over every line of the budget in every department looking for efficiencies.
"It's quite complicated because we have, at last count, 35 distinct types of services that we provide and those are all budgeted through more than 130 different functions, so it's like reviewing 130 little budgets," Merrick said.
The budget meetings are not a behind-closed-doors process. SCRD staff would like to see more members of the public attend the budget meetings.
"The meetings are open to the public and they are encouraged to attend and we actively look for input from members of the public." SCRD board chair Donna Shugar said, despite the challenges, the SCRD has a lot of exciting items in the budget that mean improvements for the Sunshine Coast. "We have improvements in our transit program. We have a lot of water projects on the go. We have maintenance the Dakota Ridge facility. We've got a climate action plan that we are going to be working on this year."
She added the SCRD has also invested in a sustainability program for the Coast and a new training room for the Gibsons fire department.
"We're looking at everything possible without reducing the level of service that we have, which we are very proud of and want to maintain," she said.
