Property Taxes

Property taxes have increased significantly in recent years in Sooke - by approximately 10.5% in 2026 alone and an average of 6.25% per year over the last 10 years. That is a tough bill to swallow for a lot of people. 

Unfortunately, these increases are largely fueled by downloaded costs from from the province - for example, in 2025 E-Comm (911) and policing combined created a 7.9% increase all by themselves. The reality that significantly more police costs would be downloaded to the municipality was known, at least to council and staff, for many years, but no plan was created. Combined with other cost increases, it has hit many hard in this economic climate. We need to avoid similar situations in the future.

The goal most years should be tax increases in line with inflation unless there are, with community approval, large ticket infrastructure projects undertaken. However consider infrastructure debts, service deficits and lack of commercial space that will not be possible for years to come.

Any increase in services requires an increase in taxation. As a community we have to make sensible choices about what services have the most value. 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.

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, they have very minimal impact unless it is high density. So the budget is increased and more taxes are coming in but more expenses go out so low density 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.
• Pre-emptive 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 even if it could reduce taxes.

Our goal should be for tax increases to be approximately matching inflation but that is not possible until our tax base of commercial, industrial and high density is increased. We don't want to dip below inflation by much - that prevents sudden surprises when infrastructure has to be replaced even if we don't need it in one year for example. On the other hand unless there is a referendum about a major new infrastructure project we should be avoiding tax increases that are significantly over inflation.

That said, we have large challenges coming. We have significant infrastructure deficits - both new work that needs to be done and existing infrastructure that needs replacement before failure. Until we are at a healthy rate of infrastructure repair taxes will have to increase.

 Some people have promised "5%" the first year and then capped at inflation (unless referendums happen for new projects). This is the same as promising to reduce services. Why do I say this? Currently 1% tax increase/decrease is approximately $140,000 +/- to Sooke budget. 911 costs are confirmed to be increasing further
 

The district’s bill is forecast to rise from $430,540 in 2026 to $638,300 in 2027, $776,000 in 2028 and $1.1 million in 2029.
Sooke News Mirror

So if no other costs increase other than than, that is 1.5% tax increase in 2027, 1% tax increase in 2028, 2-3% tax increase in 2029. There are guaranteed pay increases in current union contracts with police, fire and municipal staff. With inflation at around 2-3% those numbers simply don't work. We have infrastructure deficits as shown by recent events like the culvert collapse on Blythwood.