Not so fast: Bike route set for fresh vote
It now appears the lake-to-lake bike route will be completed this year.
Coun. Ryan Graham says it was an honest mistake on his part Tuesday when he voted in favour of a motion to remove capital funding for the project from the draft 2023 budget.
"I had voted in favour of not completing (the bike route) when in fact I want to complete it. So, I was misspoken when I did vote on that," said Graham at the tail end of Wednesday's session.
He then gave notice of a motion to reconsider the vote at Thursday's budget wrap-up, which was scheduled to begin in the late afternoon after The Herald’s press deadline.
The motion to halt the project passed 4-3, so if all the votes stay the same except for Graham's, that means the project will be back on. Graham’s original vote had the effect of removing from the draft 2023 budget $1.5 million in capital funding to complete the final leg of the lake-to-lake bike route from Galt Avenue down South Main Street to Skaha Lake Park.
But because it’s a capital project funded by a combination of reserves and grants, halting it wouldn’t have done anything to lower the proposed 9.7% tax hike that’s still on the table.
Through its first two days of deliberations, council nibbled around the edges of the budget and voted down several attempts to cut funding to programs like communications, parks maintenance and social development.
However, there is some wiggle room in the city’s general surplus that could be used to trim the coming tax hike.
Finance manager Angela Campbell told council there was $9.6 million in the city’s general surplus at the end of 2021. Of that, only about $4.7 million is available because there are draws against it totalling $4.9 million scheduled for this year and next.
Campbell warned, however, that $9.6 million is considered under city policy to be the “optimum balance” in the surplus account because it represents about 15% of annual expenses and acts as a safety net.
Of the proposed 9.7% tax increase, 3.3% is intended to cover deferred hikes from past years and another 3.4% is meant to cover the municipality’s increased operational costs for the year ahead. The balance would be new spending on things like four new firefighters and two new RCMP officers.
A 9.7% tax hike would see the owner of an average home worth $662,000 pay an extra $176 this year on top of utility rate increases that will tack on another $61. For the average commercial property worth $1.2 million, a 9.7% hike would add $688 to its annual tax bill, on top of an extra $380 in utility fees.