The Salt Spring Island Local Community Commission (LCC) is holding a public town hall meeting on Thursday, January 9, at 5:00 in the SIMS Board Room. The focus of the town hall is to answer voter questions, and to elicit feedback, on the proposed 2025 CRD/LCC budget. The proposed “provisional” budget, approved by the LCC in September, will be given final approval by the LCC at a special meeting scheduled for January 30. The CRD Board will approve the final budget in its entirety in March. The January 9 town hall will provide one of the last public opportunities for Salt Spring voters to discuss the budget with their elected commissioners before the budget is set to be finalized.
The CRD Board approved its provisional budget for 2025, including that of the SSI Local Community Commission (LCC), at its October 30 meeting. The provisional budget is prepared by CRD staff based on a number of factors, including inflation, negotiated wage and salary settlements and contractual obligations, CRD guidelines for capital and operating reserves, and direction by elected officials of new initiatives. The provisional budget, which is reviewed and approved by elected officials locally and regionally, provides the opportunity for public input before final approval in March 2025.
The full CRD provisional tax requisition for Salt Spring Island, including CRD regional, sub-regional, and local services along with the Capital Region Hospital District is $9.2 million, a 13.2% increase over the 2024. The CRD requisition supports general administration, regional investments in affordable housing, new health facilities, parks, and emergency planning and communications, as well as sub-regional services such as building inspection. The above figures do not include user fees for some services such as recreation facilities, nor area specific water and sewer utilities (overseen by ratepayer elected commissions), also increasing somewhat to address inflationary pressures.
The provisional CRD requisition represents a cost for the “average” residence on Salt Spring (valued at just over $1 million in 2024) of $1,400 in 2025, or about $117 per month, compared to $1,238 or $103 per month in 2024. This “average” residential cost is an estimated indicator only and subject to change with updated 2025 assessment values.
The property tax funded requisition for delegated Local Community Commission (LCC) services (including parks and recreation, transportation and transit, liquid waste, economic development, the library and the arts, and grants in aid) is $4.996 million, a 12.49% increase over 2024. The LCC requisition represents about 52% of the total CRD increase for Salt Spring.
This has been another difficult budget year, due in part to continuing cost inflation. Salt Spring also has less influence on the regional costs allocated to it (primarily on the basis of our share of assessed values) in the broader CRD budget. Major factors affecting regional costs are:
- Negotiated wage and salary increases, staff turnover, and reorganization, including the addition of a new General Manager position for the Electoral Area Services Department. However, this will improve senior staff support for all the Electoral Areas, as well as direct support for the SSI LCC.
- Significant increases at land banking and housing (including the new Rural Housing Program and financing costs of completed Regional Housing First projects), regional trail investments (including designs for Salt Spring’s segment of the Salish Sea Trail), and general administration (including cyber security and accounting upgrades to support the approximately 200 services CRD delivers in the region).
- An increase for building inspection (a service shared by the three Electoral Areas), in large part reflecting lower building permit revenues.
- The Capital Regional Hospital District (CRHD) requisition, which recently contributed $3.7 million to the new Lady Minto emergency room, remains at 2024 levels, but will increase sharply in future years due to a number of significant regional health facility projects (including some improvements at Lady Minto Hospital, but currently excluding upgrades to the extended care wing of the hospital).
Major factors affecting the proposed provisional requisition of the local CRD LCC on Salt Spring include:
- restoration of Sunday pool hours
- initial costs associated with the leasing of the former Phoenix School property for community use
- increases in transfers to reserves to help address aging and proposed new infrastructure, including possible re-purposing of the Ganges fire hall property
- costs passed down by BC Transit for our local transit system, which is also still recovering from the cumulative ridership and revenue impacts of COVID
- increased costs to the library, as it continues to transition from a volunteer run facility to a greater reliance on paid staff
The LCC will be reviewing the provisional budget on January 30 and considering changes based on public input before referring its final budget to the CRD Board for approval. The CRD budget will be finalized in March, based on further public input and updated information on property assessments and year end surpluses or deficits.
Summaries of the provisional CRD budget for 2025 will be available at the local administration office (121 McPhillips), at the library, and online at https://getinvolved.crd.bc.ca/2025-financial-plan. Please contact LCC Chair Earl Rook (erook@crd.bc.ca) or CRD Director Gary Holman (directorssi@crd.bc.ca) for any comments or questions on the budget.
