Kamloops City Council has approved a five year, 26 per cent levy increase for downtown business owners that are members of the Kamloops Central Business Improvement Association (KCBIA).

At Tuesday council meeting, Privacy Officer, Stephanie Nichols, says there weren’t enough business owners who voiced their opposition to the increase as part of a counter-petition process.

“The 30 day petition period ended on Dec. 3, 2021 and we received 26 petitions opposing renewal of the KCBIA, representing approximately $21 million of included assessed value, which did not meet the 50 per cent requirement stipulated by the charter,” she said.

“To prevent council from adopting the bylaw, petitions were required from 174 property owners representing almost $200 million in assessed value. Therefore, we ask that council receive the certificate of insufficiency stating the required number of petitions were not received.”

In 2022, downtown business owners will contribute about $296,096 towards the KCBIA, a 1.5 per cent increase from the roughly $291,654 in 2021. The levy will increase by five percent in 2023, followed by 6.5 per cent in each of the following three years, to a total of $375,553 in 2026.

KCBIA President Dino Bernardo told NL News the five year renewal means the organization will be able to continue hosting events like the Santa Claus Parade while “working to build a better downtown core”.

“We tried to keep [the increase] down in the first couple of years while we come out of the pandemic but the reason why we have an increase is that everything costs more in life,” he said. “There is an inflationary cost, and the cost of hiring good people. We have to staff our office. We have to staff our CAP Team and that stuff isn’t cheap.”

“Everything else in the world is going up so we can’t keep it at the same rate.”

“What I think is that it means we’re going to continue the work that [former Executive Director] Carl [DeSantis] and his team were doing well with maintaining downtown during this pandemic,” he added. “We’re excited to come out of the pandemic and return to what we’re really good at in hosting events and building our downtown core [with our new Executive Director, Howie Reimer].

Bernardo also says he wants to work with the 26 business owners who were against that levy increase.

“I get where they are coming from because we just came out of a pandemic where we weren’t open for 18 months so I understand it might not be the best time to have raise or to do that but when is a good time to raise fees on anything?” Bernardo said.

“I would just hope that they would have an open ear for us to show them what we can and how we can benefit our downtown.”

The KCBIA covers all businesses and light industrial properties between Columbia Street and the South Thompson River from First to Tenth avenues.