The Thompson Nicola Regional District is potentially looking at a tax increase of 5.68 percent throughout the municipalities and electoral areas in the TNRD.
The 2023 draft tax requisition went to the board last week, with TNRD Chief Financial Officer Carla Fox saying property assessments are the key driver of how much the municipalities and electoral areas in the TNRD will each have to pay.
“What that means, is your property values, depending on how they go up and down, especially for the Regional District, it essentially affects what portion of the pie you’re going to pay,” she said.
“So, even without a budget change, if your assessments went up 25 per cent, you are going to take on a larger portion of the pie where some that dropped.”
As Fox explains, another factor that determines how much the tax rate changes, are the services offered.
Photo: TNRD (Jan. 2023)
“There are 11 municipalities and 10 electoral areas, so essentially, that’s 21 different budgets with a number of different services required in each of those areas,” explained Fox.
“Some (services) are the same and some are different, so you’re kind of doing a tax requisition or a tax rate change for each area — based on whatever makes up that that area and the number of services that are provided.”
In the draft, the City of Kamloops is poised for a 5.92 per cent increase.
Electoral Area O is projected to see a tax rate hike of 12.84 per cent, the largest increase across the district; while Logan Lake could see its TNRD tax requisition drop by 5.4 per cent, the largest decrease in the TNRD.
Fox explained that these numbers are all preliminary, as final property assessments for 2023 won’t be released until March.
“If you think of all of those areas, I think there are only two areas that went up in single digits and all the rest went up in double digits, that’s already impacting tax requisitions and the amount you’ll pay,” she explained.
“I think it’s going to be interesting to see because those are based on previous year’s assessments, and we already know that that’s not looking that way for this year at the end of last year.”
A full link to the TNRD 2023 Draft Budget can be found here.
