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City maps out 2025 budget
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Administration opens budget talks with request for a 5.83% tax increase COLIN SLARK Citizen Staff
Heading into budget deliberations, city administration’s proposed budget contained $56.3 million in capital spending and $177.5 million in operating spending. City councillors began budget talks with a lengthy meeting on Monday. Draft documents presented at the last 2024 meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance and Audit showed that staff was suggesting a 6.55 per cent tax increase. That increase was made up by a proposed $6.7 million increase in the general operating budget, approximately $1.4 million more in infrastructure funding, $700,000 more in the snow control budget and $300,000 more for the road rehabilitation budget. Combined, that would have represented around $9.1 million more for the operating budget compared to 2024.
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City councillors and staff take part in the first 2025 budget meeting on Monday.
However, in the documents attached to the agenda for the January budget meetings, that figure had been whittled down to 5.83 per cent. That number, if approved, would lead to the representative household receiving a $158.87 property tax increase. BC Assessment’s 2025 figures list the
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average value of a single-family residential home in Prince George as $451,000. Overall, the value of residential properties went up by an average of 1.9 per cent from 2024 to 2025. In the revised proposal, the general operating fund increase was reduced to around $5.7 million with all other
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categories remaining the same. By comparison, council approved tax increases of 6.78 per cent in 2024, 7.58 per cent in 2023, three per cent in 2022 and zero per cent in 2021. A chart comparing Prince George’s tax increases worth a total of 18.32 per cent over that timeframe to eight other BC municipalities showed that it was lower than Saanich (30.51 per cent), Nanaimo (26.05 per cent), Kamloops (23.95 per cent), Coquitlam (22.32 per cent), Maple Ridge (21.70 per cent), Victoria (21.44 per cent) and Chilliwack (18.93 per cent), but higher than Kelowna (17.52 per cent). Budget documents also showed that the projected snow control costs for 2024 were $10.1 million — $200,000 less than was budgeted. If the final accounting shows that figure is correct, the surplus will be added to the snow control reserve for a year-end total of $2.4 million.
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2025
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DAN MCLAREN Founder & Financial Advisor DAN MCLAREN Founder & Financial Advisor
DanMMcLaren DAN CLAREN Founder & Financial Advisor President
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