After the City of Kamloops re-approves this year’s budget, staff say amendments could be made as needed because of the pandemic.

Finance director Kathy Humphrey made that comment to council, after saying the city has to have a property tax rate set by May 15 so that property tax bills go out on time.

“Rather than budget for things that might happen, we’ll just budget for the things that we know can happen and then go from there. So I think that is what we need from the budget side,” Humphrey says.

“If it turns out to be not enough, council can meet again and amend the budget, like we do in other years. Normally we’re amending to add something fun and something excellent into the budget, this would be sort of the opposite of that. Where we’re getting together to amend the budget to reflect additional losses, or additional projections of deficits, things like that.”

At this rate, the city is expecting to lose $3.7 million in net revenues by June 30. As a result some capital projects are expected to be cut out of this year’s budget.

Proposed changes to the budget will come to city council next week.