The City of Nanaimo will be able to begin 2025 with a provisional budget in place after council passed three readings of a financial plan bylaw this week.
Council, at a meeting Monday, Dec. 16, passed first, second and third reading of a 2025-29 financial plan bylaw that will potentially bring an eight-per cent property tax increase.
The projected property tax increase started at 8.7 per cent last month, but during budget deliberations over recent weeks, staff and council whittled that down.
During those discussions at a series of finance meetings, councillors opted to add 12 new RCMP officers between 2025-27, add 10 community safety officers during 2025-26, add a new staff position in both the finance and the planning departments, and increase cultural funding. On the other side of the ledger, council is choosing to delay the second phase of the Commercial Street project and reduce the budget for wages and benefits to account for vacancies that arise during the year.
A staff report noted that the provisional financial plan invests in services and infrastructure for more than 100,000 residents, and supports departmental business plans and actions that support goals of the Nanaimo ReImagined city plan.
According to the city, the potential tax increase will mean that a household at an average home valued at $784,000 will pay $3,070 in property taxes in 2025, an increase of $227 from 2024.
Laura Mercer, the city’s general manager of corporate services, said finance department staff will continue to update the financial plan with any changes to budget estimates and any additional financial decisions made by council. The financial plan must be adopted by May 15, so city staff will report back in April and provide an opportunity for council to review and amend the financial plan bylaw at that time.
All three readings of the financial plan bylaw passed 8-1 with Coun. Tyler Brown opposed.
“I think there’s a lot of really good things in [the financial plan] but … the values I campaigned on and would like to see more of, I think the budgets have slowly been drifting from those, just with respects to the type of projects and emphasis,” he said.