The current mayor and town councillors of Smithers, should they choose to run, could be in for a tough election this fall.
At a special council meeting April 19, they unanimously voted to pass the first three readings of the Town’s Five-Year Financial Plan (2022-2026) Bylaw.
The $21.07 million budget is an increase of $1.28 million over the estimate from the 2021 five-year plan for which director of finance William Wallace cited a number of factors.
Among these are a restructuring of the town’s administration at a cost of $390,000 annually, reorganization of the finance department ($389,000), inflation ($247,000), an RCMP budget gap ($170,000) and increased fuel costs (80,000).
To help pay for all of these things, residential taxpayers are going to see a tax hike of 11.8 per cent this year.
Ouch.
While that only represents approximately $170 this year ($14 per month) for an average single-family home now valued at $401,000, it’s going to be a hard sell to families already reeling from the soaring cost of, well, everything.
We sympathize with council with respect to the fact that municipalities are limited in the streams of revenue available to them and that some of the financial pressure they face is beyond their control.
Smithers, in particular, has an unusual property tax profile for northern rural communities in that we don’t have a lot of industry to shoulder the burden, so it falls mainly on our residential and commericial sectors (84 per cent combined).
And none of us want to give up clean streets, public safety, recreational facilities, cultural amenities or any of the other many services the Town provides.
Nevertheless, surely, during nearly six months of budget deliberations, they could have found some way to balance the books without dumping a significant additional burden on already beleaguered voters.