Taxes

Taxes have increased significantly in recent years in Sooke. By approximately 15% in 2025. That is a tough bill to swallow for a lot of people.  

Unfortunately, I have to acknowledge that given that most of that is related to downloaded costs from from the province - E-Comm (911), policing combined are a 7.9% increase all by themselves - I would likely have voted the same as our current councillors and said this is painful but necessary. We are lucky to still have the lowest municipal taxes on southern Vancouver Island - but that is limited comfort to someone having to budget for a 15% increase of a big yearly bill. 

E-Comm (911) being downloaded to the municipality was known at least to council and staff and close watchers of provincial actions and known to be coming due this year for the last 3 years. So it definitely shouldn't have been a surprise, but combined with other cost increases is hard especially in this economic climate.

End of the day, we can't change the past but what we should be talking about is the future.

The goal most years should be tax increases similar to inflation unless there are large ticket infrastructure projects undertaken - with community approval via referendum.

Any increase in services increases taxation costs. So we have to make sensible choices about what services have the most values. Fire department moving to 3 shifts and the increased safety there is a great example of a change I wholeheartedly support. 

A lot of Sooke's non-capital municipal costs are staffing - in 2024, over 9m out of 22m in expenditures. If including the RCMP contract, up over half of expenditures. With provincial push for more development - and faster timelines - there is going to be an upward push on staffing. Pre-emptive zoning and the reduction in meetings, review and events for each parcel can reduce that push.

The taxes from new developments do increase total budgets, but on a per property basis and factoring in the new roads, streetlights, sidewalks, parks and other ongoing maintenance items has very minimal impact. So the budget is increased and more taxes are coming in but more expenses go out so residential development will basically never lead to a reduction in tax rate. However, commercial development is taxed at a much higher rate - so more commercial will help prevent further large residential impacts from tax increases. 

In short our priorities for limiting tax increases without impairing services should be:

• Encourage commercial development - and some light industrial.
• Premptive zoning.
• More long term planning to build infrastructure at the right time (Throup to Phillips should've been built 10 years ago for example)

Note due to impact on housing affordability I do not support increasing DCCs to reduce taxes - additionally there is likely going to be federal and provincial pressure to reduce DCC costs.