Budget Season Is Upon Us - 20% Increase for North Cowichan?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Hello folks. We hope you had a wonderful holiday season. We took a bit of time off after publishing Edition 16 of The Westward Independent ( link ) to be with family, but who can relax for long when the agenda grinds forward no matter what?

PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO FILL OUT THE N.C. SIMPLE BUDGET SURVEY HERE

Having attended one of the Open Houses, I was able to chat with many staff members from North Cowichan and ask questions of different departments.

There were a few underlying themes that seemed to weave their way through many of the departments. One was the downloading of expectations for service from the Province to the Municipality. For example, the daycare that the Province is expecting from us. As one staff member mentioned, people feel it is great that we get a ‘grant’ from the province to build it - but who then maintains it for the years to come? That would just cause higher municipal taxes over the years, reminiscent of the dock the Feds ‘gifted’ us, only to cost around 1,200,000 to fix and upgrade in 2024.

Another theme was the lack of reserves for all the repairs now needed for infrastructure - especially with all the fancy 15min city upgrades such as bike lanes everywhere, many with new fancy barriers. And once again, though many of these sidewalks and bike lanes will be downloaded onto builders to pay, who in the end pays to keep them upgraded, plowed, repainted etc? You.

The staff of North Cowichan are extremely responsive and informative if you have questions.

More information from The Budget Department on the timeline for the Budget process and meeting can be viewed here

The Budget “asks” can be viewed here by either opening up each department’s attachment, or watching the video presentation.

What did I find when reading each attachment? Not much, they basically give their costs needed to run, and any wish list to add extra to their department’s budget. There is no detailed line-item type of spreadsheet so you can really dig into where each department’s budget goes. This makes it difficult for the Councilors as well to pick apart budgets to see how they can keep our taxes low.

I did see that our Municipal Forest reserve, that used to make money, is still not being logged as we are STILL in consultation with First Nations - therefore tax payers will end up subsidizing this department. I noticed a lot of mention of The Clean BC program around houses, which means they will move forward with their climate plan to eventually cause us (force us) to retrofit our homes. I noticed a department called People and Culture which has a budget almost double Legislative Services who gave us in 2024 : “Successfully bargained first Collective Agreement for POC Firefighters, Service Management Toolkit released for Senior Leadership and Managers Service, Comprehensive preparation for 2025 Collective Bargaining for core municipal employees, Service Corporate training completed: First Nations Reconciliation and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) for management team; key policy refreshers for all staff” for a cool million.

This is what we saw with the CVRD Last year, they start at some astronomical tax rate, and then pat themselves on the back when they lower it by 3%. North Cowichan has always had reasonable increases 1-3% until last year, when they were presented with around 10% ( as I remember) and cut it down to 5.6% which was a large increase ESPECIALLY since they removed utilities from the taxes which caused citizens to ADDITIONALLY pay another $600 + a year on TOP of the tax increase. I noticed indications as to the utility rates will in crease - surprise.

So what will they do this year to lower the proposed 20% tax increase? lower it 5%? This is unacceptable - “You will own nothing and be happy”.

Remember the structure at your municipality: The Council are your public servants, who only have power over the CAO. The CAO is in charge of all the staff. Who should be making this whole corporation run more efficiently and with lower costs? Between the Province downloading many additional costs to municipalities, and out of control ‘climate’ budgets, something has to break eventually - or maybe all the apartments being built are for future previous homeowners?

CAO Department operating Budget :

Also … look at this increase in their “Pubic Private Partnerships” :

WEF promotes private partnerships - read more here

You can write North Cowichan Council council@northcowichan.ca

Or attend upcoming meetings, which we will send out in advance.

Unable to attend a meeting? Not to worry. Email your questions and comments to budget@northcowichan.ca

Sincerely,

Adrienne and Team COAP