Parksville sewage parcel taxpayers will see an increase of five per cent for 2021.
The city’s director of finance, Lucky Butterworth, presented to council a report on this year’s rate increase for sewage parcel taxes at the Monday, April 19 council meeting.
According to his report, the sanitary sewer parcel tax is based on the minimum fee billed to sewage utility accounts. Last year’s minimum sewage fee was $164.59. By adding the approved five per cent sewage rate increase to last year’s minimum fee, 2021 will see $172.82 per parcel.
The five per cent increase was authorized by council as per the 2021-2023 financial plan.
Butterworth said there are 182 sewer parcels accounts that will be impacted.
As he said during Monday’s council meeting, section 200 of the community charter allows council to impose parcel taxes to provide funding for service.
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His report stated that the city’s base rate currently includes 200 cubic metres of sewerage flow per year.
“With the RDN wastewater treatment plant costs being added into the sewer utility and the sewerage minimum rates, consideration needs to be given to unlinking the parcel tax rates and the sewerage utility rates. The wastewater plant charges to the city are based on sewer flows from the city to that plant and any property assessed a parcel tax is not contributing to the flows that go to the plant. Therefore, it may not be appropriate to charge the parcel tax at the same rate as the other sewer accounts that are connected to the treatment plant and contributing to the plant inflows…If sewer rate payers are going to have a budgetary increase, then it would be prudent for the parcel tax rates to also have a budgetary increase,” read his report.
The tax increase will result in a revenue increase of $1,415 for 2021.
