Vancouver council delays budget approval, seeking cuts
Credit to Author: Dan Fumano| Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2019 00:55:09 +0000
Vancouver council has punted a decision on the 2020 budget until next week, directing staff to look for options to trim a proposed budget that would hit homeowners with the largest property tax increase in at least 20 years.
NPA Coun. Lisa Dominato, who introduced the referral motion, said the move was in response to “floods and floods” of public concern over the proposed tax and fee increases to fund the proposed $1.6-billion operating budget.
Vancouver’s draft 2020 budget, released late last month, included a proposed 8.2 per cent property tax hike, more than double the 10-year average annual increase. Council spent a full day last week and most of Tuesday’s meeting discussing the budget.
The 2020 budget is the first one that really reflects the priorities of the new council from their first full year in office, and the high number of motions they’ve passed during that time. Six months ago, city staff sent a budget outlook report to council stating next year’s property tax increase “could be as high at 10 per cent to implement all of the various council motions.”
On Tuesday, council approved a series of smaller reports connected to the budgeting process, including engineering, water and sewer fees. But council voted to defer a decision on what Mayor Kennedy Stewart called “the giant budget decision,” which includes spending on police, fire, parks, libraries, planning, infrastructure and more.
Introducing the referral motion, Dominato said it was in response to “floods and floods and floods of correspondence in recent weeks since the draft budget was proposed.”
“Largely, the concerns centre around the proposed tax increase and implications for affordability,” Dominato said. “So we feel that we need to take second sober look.”
The motion, as approved, asked staff to report back with an amended “options for targeted tax increases” of five, six and seven per cent.
Some councillors had initially publicly defended the proposed budget, including Green Coun. Adriane Carr who earlier said the increases were needed to “catch up” after years of underinvestments in crucial areas.
But Carr supported referring the budget back to staff, introducing an amendment requesting “detailed line items including potential risks or impacts of each proposed cost-saving option.”
Council will receive the amended draft budget back later this week, and will meet next week for debate and decision.
On Tuesday, while Vancouver’s council was considering the 2020 budget, the city received top marks in a national review of Canadian municipalities’ budgeting processes. The report from the C.D. Howe Institute, a Toronto-based economic research organization, graded financial statements from 31 Canadian cities for “clarity, comprehensiveness, and timeliness.”
Vancouver was top of the class, receiving an A+. The next highest ranked cities in the country were Surrey and Richmond which each had A-. Calgary received a B-, Montreal a C+, and Toronto a D.
The report did not make any assessments on fiscal prudence or value for taxpayers. But the C.D. Howe Institute expects to release another report in the new year measuring how cities’ spending aligns with or misses their targets.