New Westminster is poised to consider a 6.6 per cent property tax increase in 2025 – a drop from the 7.6 per cent considered a week earlier.
At a Dec. 2 workshop, council supported a 2025 budget scenario that proposed to a 7.6 per cent tax increase to property taxes. At a follow-up workshop on Dec. 9, council rescinded the previous week’s motion and voted 4-1 in favour of directing staff to report back with a consolidated five-year financial plan bylaw that incorporates a 6.6 property tax increase for 2025.
Shehzad Somji, the city’s chief financial officer, told council Monday that there may have been some confusion at the previous week’s workshop about some aspects of the budget. He provided council with an update and sought confirmation about council’s intent regarding the 2025 property tax increase.
Following Somji’s update, council voted 5-0 in favour of rescinding the motion that had been approved at last week’s workshop. Council then voted 4-1 in support of a budget scenario that proposes a 6.6 per cent tax increase in 2025.
Mayor Patrick Johnstone and councillors Ruby Campbell, Tasha Henderson and Jaimie McEvoy supported the motion, while Coun. Paul Minhas voted in opposition. (Coun. Daniel Fontaine had attended most of Monday’s lengthy workshop but was not in council chambers for this item; Coun. Nadine Nakagawa has not been in attendance at recent council meetings.)
At Monday’s meeting, a majority of council supported Scenario 2 for the 2025 financial plan, which includes a baseline budget increase of 5.5 per cent and some enhancements. The baseline budget includes all non-discretionary inflation increases, contractual obligations, including collective agreement increases, regulatory and legislative requirements.
Scenario 2 also includes: a 0.9 per cent increase for enhancements approved by the New Westminster police board for the police department; a 0.2 per cent decrease for items recommended by the city’s senior management team (SMT) that will address “critical areas” where resources are needed for organizational effectiveness and to mitigate risks; and a 0.4 per cent increase for enhancements that council had previously referred to its 2025 budget deliberations.
According to Somji, the proposed property tax increase would result in a $323 increase for a single-family residence, a $133 increase for a strata, and a $2,446 increase for a business, based on the average assessment value of 2024.
Somji said there may have been confusion at last week’s meeting regarding some enhancements that the senior management team had recommended be deferred to 2026 and the staggering of start dates of new employees hired by the City of New Westminster in 2025. These two items would have added an additional one per cent increase to next year’s property taxes.
Campbell questioned staff about one of the items being deferred – funding for staff in New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services. (This $262,989 budget item related to the hiring of additional firefighters.)
“I always worried when we defer something,” she said. “I'm just wondering: are we OK with that suppression staffing? Because, obviously, it's in there for a reason.”
Fire Chief Erin Williams said the fire department’s strategic plan aims to match its human resources with growth in the community. He said the department had set a target of hiring two firefighters to meet the anticipated growth in the community.
“When we sat through the budget process, we as an SMT group decided that we would defer some of those positions into 2026 that weren't corporate priorities,” he explained.
Henderson supported the budget that incorporated a 6.6 per cent tax increase. She noted it includes the baseline budget needed to maintain existing services and an increase that allows the New Westminster Police Department to hire three new police officers and complete its three-year backfill strategy.
“Then there’s 0.4 per cent for council-supported initiatives, including the Q to Q ferry,” she added. “None of those things feel discretionary to me at this time, so I will support the 6.6 per cent …. I would much prefer seeing the 6.6 number than the 7.6.”
Scenarios considered
A staff report stated the “baseline budget” is the 2024 approved budget of salaries, benefits, materials, supplies, inflation, contracted services, as well as the non-discretionary 2025 service enhancements, regulatory and legislative items, and known increase for service contracts such as the E-Comm 911 service. The baseline budget would result in a property tax increase of 5.5 per cent.
At the Dec. 2 workshop, staff outlined several budget scenarios, with Scenario 1 proposing a 4.5 per cent property tax increase. The option, which had been requested by council, would require the city to cut $1.1 million from the baseline budget to achieve a 4.5 per cent tax increase; staff recommended the cuts be distributed across all city departments.
Scenario 2, which would result in a 7.6 per cent property tax increase, would include all items in the baseline budget as well as $11.4 million in enhancements.
Scenario 3 allowed council to create “the recommended property tax” option. For this scenario, staff divided the service enhancement requests into five categories: the 5.5 per cent baseline budget; senior management team recommended requests (including new staffing positions in various departments); and police board approved budget items that add 0.9 per cent to the city’s property tax (including the police officer positions).
A fourth category related to council-supported enhancements that had been requested by council during the year and referred to the budget process. These items, which included the Q to Q ferry service, staff to manage the Q to Q service, and a grants coordinator, would result in an additional 0.4 per cent property tax impact.
A fifth category described as “deferred to 2026” included two components that would have added one per cent to the property tax increase – this is what brought last week’s budget approval up 7.6 percent. A staff report said the senior management team had reviewed enhancement requests from all departments and “made the difficult decision” to defer some requests to the 2026 budget with the goal of mitigating the 2025 tax increase; these items would have added an additional 0.6 per cent tax increase included. In addition, the senior management team has also staggered the hiring of the requested new positions to start between the second fourth quarter of 2025; the staggering of these start dates has deferred 0.4 per cent of a property tax increase to the 2026 budget.
Scenario supported
Following a staff presentation and a fulsome discussion on the various scenarios, council voted 4-2 in support of directing staff to use Scenario 2 as the basis of next year’s property tax revenue increase. Mayor Johnstone and councillors Campbell, Henderson and McEvoy supported the motion – with some saying they did not think the figure was “cemented” and indicating they would still like to see the tax rate reduced from 7.6 per cent.
Campbell said she supports a budget that includes funding for items such as supporting the business community, taking action to encourage more community involvement at Anvil Centre, hiring a grants coordinator who can support local organizations applying for grants, and maintaining the ferry service between the Quayside and Queensborough neighbourhoods.
“I really appreciated staff sharing what would be at risk, quite frankly, if we went with a 4.5 scenario. … I don't want to jeopardize some of the items that I saw there that would be at jeopardy if we were to go with 4.5; for instance, the Q to Q service,” she said. “We've heard loud and clear from Queensborough residents that this is something that they value. We know that it's difficult to fund but it's more difficult for us to not fund it.”
Campbell said she is not prepared to support a budget that results in cuts to the police department’s backfill strategy or services such as summer hours at the public library. She said it is challenging to increase the city’s tax rate for residents and businesses, but noted the city also has to be able to pay its staff.
“If we don't have staff, work does not get done,” she said.
At the Dec. 2 workshop, Fontaine put forward a motion that council defer consideration of the budget report until the Dec. 15 meeting, so he and community members had more time to digest the “large volume” of information in the report.
Council voted 3-3 to defer consideration of the budget until Dec. 15, which meant it was defeated. Henderson and Minhas supported Fontaine’s motion.
Councillors Fontaine and Minhas then opposed the vote on the proposed budget, which was supported in a 4-2 vote.
While he was not in council chamber for this week’s vote on the budget, Fontaine voiced numerous concerns about the 2025 budget at last week’s meeting, including the across-the-board method proposed by staff for making cuts as part of a 4.5 per cent tax hike option, the number of new staffing positions being created in the City of New Westminster, and the impact that a 7.6 per cent tax rate would have on residents and businesses.
Fontaine said many of the respondents to an Ipsos poll, conducted as part of the city’s budget process, indicated they want the city to keep the increase as close as possible to the rate of inflation, which is in the two to three per cent range.
“If it's approved, it will only continue to increase dramatically, in my opinion, the size of the public service yet again, on top of what we did last year. And after two years of rapid growth and expenses, I think it's time for council to, as they say, read the room,” he said. “As difficult as it is for us to make that decision as politicians, we need, I believe, to understand that local taxpayers and business owners are not ATMs. They're not simply there for us as council to make a withdrawal whenever we need it.”
Instead of across-the-board cuts to all departments’ budgets that staff recommended to achieve a 4.5 per cent tax increase, Fontaine said he would prefer cuts be made to specific none-core items, such as a rebranding exercise for the city.
Minhas joined his New West Progressives colleague, in voting against the proposed budget, citing concerns about rising property taxes and utility rates for New West residents and businesses.
“It's time for us to put a pause on the rapid growth of the size, scope and scale of our city government over the next year,” he said about new staffing positions proposed in the budget.
But Henderson said she supported the staff positions created last year, including the lifeguards at the new təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre.
“The staffing that we added last year allowed us to open a brand new community centre,” she said. “So, I think it is really important to highlight where these people are going. And thank goodness that we were able to fill so many of the aquatic staff positions, in particular. There was a huge demand.”
