A retired economist and banker who is a resident of Thetis Island wants the Cowichan Valley Regional District to cap any tax increases in 2025 to three per cent.
Paul Duncan told the CVRD’s board at its committee of the whole meeting on Oct. 30 that he believes the CVRD’s taxes have gotten so out of control. He is also suggesting that the Gulf Islands should become a sub region of the district’s electoral area G (Saltair/Gulf Islands) in an effort to have lower taxes in the coming years.
Duncan told the CVRD’s board at its meeting on Oct. 30 that he’s concerned that the residents of Thetis Island, and the Gulf Islands in general, are not receiving their fair value of services for the increasingly higher taxes they are paying to the district.
He said there must be an equivalence between the benefits and costs of services, and residents should only have to pay for the services they receive.
“We don’t feel we’re getting the same level of services as other parts of the region,” Duncan said. “It’s simply because we don’t have the same opportunities in our lives on the Gulf Islands. Some residents don’t even have a ferry service so how many services do you think they’ll use in the CVRD? We can’t sustain this level of taxation.”
He said a neighbour of his on Thetis Island has seen his taxes to the CVRD increased by 227 per cent since 1998, while inflation over that period of time has risen just 58 per cent.
Duncan said taxes for his two-acre property have risen 49 per cent over the past two years, while the assessed value of his property rose just 29 per cent in that time period, and inflation increased by 4.8 per cent.
“I don’t think a lot of people are really aware of how big their tax increases [from the CVRD] have been in recent years,” he said. “Recreational funding is one of the big increases, and then funding for the libraries, and I’m expecting higher taxes again in 2025 simply due to recreational funding.”
Duncan said part of the problem is that recreational services in the CVRD have been underfunded for years and there was no reserve funds set aside for maintenance and repairs on the infrastructure, so when things need to be fixed or replaced, it’s the current taxpayers who must pay for it and that means increased taxes for that for residents of the Gulf Islands on top of the planned increases to recreational funding in general.
“Basically, the Gulf Islands don’t need the recreational funding because we don’t use those services,” he said. “Service benefits should be based on usage and I don’t believe the Gulf Islands are getting the benefits relative to the tax increases that they pay. A better way would be to look at reducing the CVRD’s services to the Gulf Islands, which should reduce the taxes from the Gulf Islands.”
Duncan suggested that the CVRD should establish a priority of CVRD services which would see some services that everyone would pay for, like the regional hospital, and then a hierarchy of services based on usage.
“We could consider the Gulf Islands becoming a sub region of electoral area G, as Hornby, Lasqueti and Cortes islands have done [in their regional districts],” he said.
Ian Morrison, director for Cowichan Lake South/Skutz Falls, said, like many regional districts in B.C., the CVRD’s infrastructure assets have been neglected for generations.
He said when he was first elected in 2008, the financial philosophy at the time was to keep costs down and keep tax increases low.
“We came to a point where things had to be fixed and the province and the [federal government] said they were not going to give us any more grant money until we demonstrated a thorough and complete asset management program and structure, which we are now doing,” Morrison said.
“So now reserve funds are underway for many services that we have. It’s been foisted upon this group and groups all across the province to bring sound fiscal approaches to the management of our assets and we’re doing it now and that’s partly why there’s big [tax] increases.”
But Morrison assured Duncan that the CVRD’s staff are doing a great job implementing asset management throughout the CVRD.
"I think that after the third and final year [of the implementation of the district’s new structure for funding recreation] in 2026, there should be a lot more normal sorts of numbers that will come out of our budgeting processes,” he said.
