Langford enters final stages of public engagement on draft financial plan

On Tuesday, the City of Langford held the second round of public consultations on its draft 5-year financial plan. The Community Charter requires that municipalities adopt a Five-Year Financial Plan each year before May 15.

The meeting was a surprisingly short one. For a public engagement meeting, there was very very little public wanting to engage. Mayor Scott Goodman was surprised at how quickly the session went. Timing may have had an impact on attendance. The meeting was in the middle of the day, and coincided with new Lieutenant Governor Wendy Cocchia’s reading of the throne speech at the Legislature.

The timeline:

• Jan 30: Previous consultation on Operating and Capital budgets.

• Feb. 20: Final consultation

• March 3: Council will deliberate on the plan

• April 22: Council will consider 1st, 2nd, & 3rd readings

• May 5: Council will consider adopting the five-year plan through a Financial Plan and 2025 Tax Rates Bylaw

The public is welcome to attend these regular council meetings.

City continues departure from using reserves to lower taxes

The presentation reflected the city’s stated goal to bring tax revenues back up to a level that permits the funding of ongoing operations and accounts for all new tax impacts.

This new financial plan replaces a former trend that reduced tax revenue for the city by using surplus and reserve funds, primarily from the General Amenity Reserve. Reserved funds are primarily used by municipalities to cover the costs of planned and unforeseen capital expenditures.

The trend, which kept property taxes low— more than $10 million was drawn from the amenity reserve fund to offset property-tax increases—was a long-standing policy of the former council. Use of those funds saw more significant increases yearly from 2020 to 2022, coinciding with the heaviest years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, council made the decision to eliminate use of General Amenity Reserve funds for offsetting the tax increase.

The tax increase for 2024 in the approved 2023-2027 Five Year Financial Plan was 11.68%, but council subsequently voted to increase it to 15.6%. The latest increase translated into an average $4,709 total city property tax bill per household—middle-of-the-pack for Westshore municipalities Business taxes have increased at the same rates totalling $23.3K in 2022, $24.4K in 2023, and $27.1K in 2024.

Under the proposed five-year plan, Langford’s property tax rate would drop to 11.19% in 2025 and to 7.87, 7.99, and 4.89% through 2028. Note that property tax levies are a product of the assessment value of a property and a tax rate applied to that assessed value is determined by the Assessment Authority.

Where rising costs will come from

The draft plan presentation identifies multiple pressure points:

E-Comm 9-1-1 dispatch costs: 2025 budget impact of $1.47M shifting to an annual cost of $2.1M, a 1.25% tax increase. This is the result of a provincial “downloading” of emergency dispatch costs to South Island municipalities that use the RCMP.

RCMP Staffing: The 2024 staffing salary per officer was $217K, of which Langford paid 87% in 2024. Total police services costs for 2025 will come in at $18M, $19.5M in 2026, and then $22M by 2029, according to the draft budget projection.

Fire Department Staffing: The impact of adding 9 firefighters in 2025 is approximately $1M which represents a 1.85% tax increase. Total costs are $6.8M in 2025, $8.4M in 2026 to $11.1M by 2029.

Woodlands Park: The initial $7M to finance the project will come from Langford’s Growing Communities Fund in addition to $2.8M already earmarked to come from 2026 property taxes. Buyouts of tenants currently living in the proposed construction zone will increase gradually beginning at $200K in 2025, $600k in 2026, $1M in 2027, and $1.45M in 2028, and 2029 $1.85M in 2029. The purchase alone will result in a year-to-year tax increase for residents of 1.75% from 2025 through to 2028.

City Hall Staffing: In order to maintain its current service levels, the city has requested additional staff and has proposed a budget of $750K for 2025 to meet them.

Read more detail on all these items in our previous article.

Comments at Tuesday's meeting

The limited input from the public did include resident Steve Rossander, a frequent critic of council’s financial prerogatives and former member of the city’s administration and finance committee. He raised concerns during the public input portion about what he described as “built-in biases” in the Lets Chat Langford survey and the potential for individual people to fill it in more than once.

City finance director Michael Dillabaugh responded that if the city received survey responses with repeating themes, they would consider publishing a set of frequently asked Q&As on the city’s website.

Let’s Chat, the online survey platform used by Langford and other municipalities to gather public input, requires each person wishing to complete a survey to input a unique email for each submission. A person wishing to submit more than once would have to create multiple email accounts to complete multiple surveys.

Survey information will be made public in the agenda package for tonight’s (Thursday's) council meeting.