Vancouver approves 3.9% 2025 property tax increase
Posted December 10, 2024 12:13 pm.
Last Updated December 10, 2024 7:43 pm.
Vancouver city council approved a property tax increase of 3.9 per cent for 2025 on Tuesday, for a total budget of $2.4 billion.
The vote comes after weeks of debate and fine-tuning as staff first released the proposed budget on Nov. 21, suggesting an increase of 5.5 per cent.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO 1130 NEWSRADIO VANCOUVER LIVE!An amendment on Tuesday put forward by Mayor Ken Sim saw the proposed increase reduced by reallocating and transferring two line items in the operating budget.
This allowed for a total reduction of $9.4 million from the staff-proposed budget.
“If you’re a resident of the city of Vancouver, if you own a business in the city of Vancouver, if you support our team members, if you believe in fiscal responsibility, today is a great day,” said Sim.
“We wanted to bring fiscal responsibility back to the city; we wanted to make sure our police service and fire and rescue service was fully funded, to name just a few things, and we accomplished that all today.”
A 3.9 per cent property tax increase translates to an annual increase of about $54 dollars for the average condo or strata unit and $149 for the average single-family home.
Council was able to further reduce the property tax increase by tweaking several line items – leaving one opposition Councillor with questions.
“3.9 per cent is going to sound really good to taxpayers, no doubt. I always worry ‘Is it artificially low?’,” said Coun. Adrienne Carr.
“Where do those savings just all of a sudden magically appear from? Are we not investing what we need to, to make sure this city is safe, that we are combating some of the big problems, like climate change?
City staff also voted to add another $3 million to the roughly $421 million staff recommended for the Vancouver Police Department budget. That number is still less than Police Chief Adam Palmer had hoped — though he says he is happy.
“It allows us to address critical areas that we wanted to: all of the staff increases, as far as statutory increases; collective agreements increases; contractual increases that we wanted; body-worn cameras is in there; rapid DNA; And also we clarified the issue of [policing] protests. So that if we do go over budget on protests, that will be accounted for by the end of next year,” said Palmer.
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—With files from Charles Brockman