Is your group or organization looking for a presentation on the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s (SCRD) 2025 budget? If so, you can contact your area director and request one in the coming months.
Along with making that offer, the SCRD formally announced in a Dec. 16 press release it would not be hosting the online public budget engagement sessions that have happened in past years. Stating that the online events “have not been well attended” the release details what it points to as “best use of staff resources” that will include recorded presentations from key staff about the coming year’s spending plan. Those presentations are to be posted on the “Let’s Talk” page dedicated to the upcoming financial plan on scrd.ca.
Three budget proposal categories
The release explains that projects for consideration as part of the 2025 budget process have been categorized into three groups.
Those include mandatory projects that must proceed in the budget year due to imminent asset failure, regulatory compliance or safety requirements. Examples of those include three upgrade projects to the Chapman Water Treatment Plant, approved in 2024 and carrying forward to 2025 with about $521,000 in expenditures yet to come, Soames Creek monitoring compliance which started in 2024 and with $189,451 required to continue the work in 2025, and a project to improve data backup budgeted at $30,000.
Another 2025 budget grouping called “strategic projects” relate directly to board strategic focus areas of water stewardship or solid waste solutions, or board directives or policy requirements. In that grouping examples cited in the release were design and permitting for a treatment plant for Gray Creek with an $864,550 estimated price tag, construction of the Langdale well field, with a revised budget estimate of $17.1 million, a raw water reservoir feasibility study that comes in at $397,872, and permitting for siphons at Chapman and Edwards Lakes, budgeted at $235,000.
Rounding out the project categorization is discretionary projects, which the release says are “initiatives identified but that do not meet the criteria for the first two classifications." A full list of proposed 2025 projects is available on the Nov. 25 finance committee Budget Round 1 agenda.
Next steps
Round 1 committee decisions on what to include in next year’s spending plan, endorsed by the Board on Nov. 28, were included in the draft budget. The next step in the 2025 budget process is slated for Jan. 9, which will include Round 2 finance committee debate on proposals made by staff that were not debated during Round 1. The committee deferred debate on most budget proposals that included staffing level increases to the second session. Round 2 committee recommendations will be reviewed by the board and finalization of all the endorsed proposals as part of the coming year’s spending plan is anticipated to happen Feb. 13.
Estimated property tax impacts
In November, SCRD staff presented a “what if” projection for property tax rates, based on the inclusion of all budget proposals. That scenario would require an overall 7.73 per cent increase on the regional district portion of area property taxes to cover 2025 SCRD services. As parcels in each area pay for different ranges of regional services, that “what if” scenario estimated 2025 rates would increase the most in Area A (Pender Harbour/Egmont) at about 10.8 per cent and the least in Area E (Elphinstone), at about 5.61 per cent. It was noted that the calculation was an early estimate and did not take into consideration projects that are deferred or abandoned, last-minute additions of projects or budget scope changes for proposals.
In October, the regional hospital district 2025 budget was endorsed with a 3.37 percent increase over 2024 levels. At that time, SCRD staff estimated that change would increase the portion of property taxes levied for that function from $6.60 to $6.82 per $100,000 of assessed value in the coming year.
