The Thompson Nicola Regional District reviewed the provisional budget for next year which proposes an overall budget increase of $71,332 , or 0.3%.

Board Chair Ken Gillis says the district’s Chief Financial Officer struggled to avoid any kind of tax increase.

“While at the same time recognizing that if we don’t move things along from year to year then suddenly four or five years down the road someone is going to really get walloped with a huge increase. So he’s trying to balance those two things.”

Gillis says COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the budget process, but he has no concern when it comes to service delivery.

“There’s no suggestion of any service cuts whatsoever. I was very pleased about that. And that was one of the thing that I think the board made clear to [our Chief Financial Officer] is that we didn’t want service cuts, but at the same time we knew that people were in no position to suffer a serious tax hit.”

The 2021 Provisional Financial Plan represents 124 separate services with total planned expenditures of $74,873,556, including member municipality MFA repayments of $13 million. This includes both operating and capital expenses and is funded from all sources of funding and not taxation alone.

The impact of this provisional budget on the average priced home in each area would be: Kamloops Increase of $0.68. All other Member Municipalities Increases ranging from $0.32 in Chase to $5.24 in Barriere, and decreases in Merritt, Logan lake and Sun Peaks ranging from $1.41 to $3.54. All Electoral Areas Increases ranging from $0.00 in Area “B” to $7.59 in Area “O”, and with a decrease of $1.96 in Area “P”

The exact amount of change will not be clearly known until 2021 assessment, new growth and surplus numbers are known and decisions are finalized about transfers to operating reserves.

The budget is scheduled to be finalized in March.