Budget 2024 – Enhancements

The 2024-2028 5 year Financial Plan was formally adopted by Council on March 11. This is the last step of the annual budget process for Council, though Staff have a lot of work to do yet in submitting documents to the province and getting those tax notices out.

I have written about different parts of the budget here: Operations, Capital, and Utilities. But the news story on the budget usually get boiled down to one number, the annual tax increase. This year’s number is higher than we are used to (though not anything near a “record” increase, as offered a few times by those who dabble in misinformation) at 7.7%. This puts us firmly in the middle of regional tax increases announced so far, which range from 4.5% in Burnaby to 10% in Langley, though the final number in Surrey has yet to be announced, but will likely exceed Langley’s.

The reasons for these higher increases everywhere are essentially the same – inflation and wage increases related to new collective agreements across the region with CUPE, Police and Fire unions, themselves being pressured upward to match regional inflation and housing costs. The biggest differences within the region are related to varying levels of service enhancements, from Surrey needing to invest in a new Police service to New Westminster needing to staff up a new $114M recreation centre. So this post I’m going to break down the increase in New West, hopefully answering a bit of what are you buying for your extra $300 this year (if you own a $1.6M house), or extra $125 if you live in the “typical” $640,000 apartment.

Again, the best way for you to dig into these numbers, if you are so inclined is to go to the January 22 Council workshop where we discussed this after giving staff some direction during the December 11 workshop, where staff proposed a 6.8% tax increase, and Council brought requests for enhancements that pushed this up by almost 1%.

“Enhancements” is one of those jargon words we use in municipal budgeting, and to talk about it is to talk about how staff approach annual budgeting. The first step is to look at everything we did last year, and hang a baseline on that. They then go through and find “efficiencies” (things we don’t need to do anymore, or cost us less to do now than they used to), and inflation/salary increases and calculate a new baseline based on those. They then look at the many, many things that Council or the Public has asked them to do beyond what they did last year. These are “enhancements” – things we didn’t do last year, but the community has asked us to offer or we need to do now because of functional or legislative changes. Staff determine what they can practically deliver, and propose what enhancements Council might consider for the coming year. Depending on the city, these are offered as service level measures, or a job positions for the people expected to deliver the job. In New West we generally do the latter, and there are strengths and weaknesses of each approach, but I’ve already gone too far down this rabbit hole.

A reasonable question I hear often is “with all these new buildings, how come my taxes still go up?” If we compare the revenue side of the 2024 Operational Budget to 2023 (the numbers are in thousands):

we see that we are planning to collect 8.7% more tax revenue than last year, or an extra $9 million. The 7.7% tax increase provides about 89%, or $8 million of this, while little more than 11% or $1 million in new tax revenue will come from charging taxes to property that didn’t exist last year – directly from growth. But remember a large portion of those other revenue sources are from things new growth pays for: building permit revenue, amenity charges and such. Look at the Sale of Services line, which is anticipated to go up by $4.4 million. Part of this is the opening of TACC, but also through increased service delivery across the City we draw more revenue from more people.

These two lines combine for ~$13 million in increased revenue. This aligns (not perfectly, but there are complicated reasons for this) with the “Proposed to Fund from Tax and Other Revenue” column at the end of the table that provides the long list of enhancements proposed for 2024 that you can see starting on page 53 of this report. This table (with a bunch of caveats) is the detailed answer to “what you are buying with the 2024 tax (and sale of service) increase?” So I am going to break the $13 million from that table down to categories to give an order-of-magnitude answer. There are lots of ways to break these down, and much overlap between each, so here come the pies.First off, two-thirds of this increase is fixed cost increases, increased costs to deliver the same services we provided in the previous year and things that we are legally or contractually obligated to pay for. About 21% are “discretionary” increases recommended by staff, things we are not legally committed to, but are required to keep service commitments we made to the community. The last 12% are things Council has directed to staff that we want to see happen in the upcoming year. Each of those three can be broken down further:

On the fixed increases, the largest part of the pie is $7.2 million in annual salary increases and increases related to the new collective agreements signed with our CUPE, Fire, and Police unions. This big piece of the biggest pie represents more than half the cost increase this year. The “new staff” section here is mostly new Emergency Management Office and Fire Prevention staff required due to new provincial regulations. The biggest fixed cost increases outside of this are an extra half a million for eCOMM (the service that provides 911 service and emergency dispatch for the region) and a big increase in insurance rates (something many in the community will recognize in their own lives).

The “discretionary” increases are dominated by the opening of təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre, which speaks a lot about how discretionary much of this actually is. These are the costs (above and beyond what it cost to run the Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre) related to opening a much larger building with many more programs. I divided it up here into annual increased staff cost (about a dozen new people between regular and auxiliary) and stuff cost (increased supply, utility, equipment, and such cost). In theory, we could open the new pool without staffing and equipping it up fully, but that is probably not a good idea. There are also two new firefighters, a new HR staff position in Police, some increased Parks staff to run programs and care for trees, and some Admin folks in HR, IT, Finance, along with a new Director position to support our re-organization of Community Services into its own department.

The Council-driven increases are things Council directed to be added to the base budget, mostly in that December workshop. Most of this is in Public Safety, with increased Fire Department staff and new staff for front-line Police to address backfill (that is, we are not increasing the compliment of sworn officers, we are hiring more to provide better coverage for vacancies, sick and parental leave, etc.). Our new Code of Conduct requires budget for an Ethics commissioner, we are augmenting some staff positions to support youth and seniors programming, and the Massey Theatre utility costs are higher than anticipated.


So overall, 54% of the increase this year is related directly to salary inflation, which was high last year (~5%) because new collective agreements included backpay to the expiration of the previous agreement a year before. The other 46% of the increase this year can be broken down like this, which is probably the simplest answer to that first question “What did I but with my tax increase this year?” if you don’t want to read that multi-page spreadsheet I linked to above.

Council – March 11, 2024

We had a pretty light agenda on Monday, and even with a good collection of public delegations we had a fairly short night by recent standards. Not that it wasn’t packed with quality content!

We started with approving the following items On Consent:

City of New Westminster and Fraser Health Authority Second Responder Program (Post-opioid overdose follow-up program)
This is yet another example of New Westminster leading from the front. This innovative program in partnership with Fraser Health will allow our First Responders to do more than just help a person survive an overdose, but to follow up with them and find out if they are OK, and whether this is the right time for them to seek help so they don’t OD again.

New Westminster has a robust Victims Services program. People who are victims of crime or survivors of a traumatic event are connected with Victim Services to assure they have the supports they need to recover from trauma. As someone who once got the phone call after I was the witness and first aid responder to a traumatic traffic incident a couple of years ago, I remember not being able to sleep that night, and getting the phone call the next day from Victim Services just asking “Hey, that was bad. Are you feeling OK?” meant something. It let me reflect on whether I was OK (I have a great support network!), reminded me that it was OK if I wasn’t OK, and assured me there were people who could help if I needed it.

Being brought back from an overdose is a traumatic event. There is a time in the days after for self-reflection, but right now there are not a lot of clear paths from being resuscitated to connection to services that might prevent future overdoses. This may provide a new path, and may help save lives. Fraser Health and the Public Safety Division of NWFR have worked out a data sharing and partnership agreement to try this pilot out, and will be reporting out on results,

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 32 Eighth Street (New Westminster SkyTrain Station) and 2126 Seventh Avenue (22nd Street SkyTrain Station)
TransLink is doing work on both “outdoor” Expo Line stations to increase capacity and safety, and much of this work cannot happen when the trains are running for safety reasons. So we are granting a Construction Noise Exemption. TransLink will be responsible for informing the neighbourhood ahead of time.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: 2126 Seventh Avenue (22nd Street SkyTrain Station)
TransLink is also going to paint the 22nd Street Station, and this cannot happen when the trains are running for safety reasons. So we are granting a Construction Noise Exemption.

Construction Noise Bylaw Exemption Request: Metro Vancouver Valve Replacements (660 East Columbia Street)
Metro Vancouver needs to do some water valve replacements on East Columbia by the entrance to Lower Hume. This requires isolation of a part of the water network, and one happens to be coming up to connect the TransLink property on the Coquitlam side to the main, so two bird one stone means sensitive timing, which means they need a Construction Noise Exemption.

Memo re: Bylaw Number Correction
We made a clerical error in numbering a Bylaw. We are fixing this. Heads up in case you followed the wrong bylaw by mistake.


We then adopted the following Bylaws:

Development Cost Charges Amendment Bylaw No. 8444, 2024
This Bylaw that makes an inflationary adjustment to what we change for Development Cost Charges was adopted by Council.

Five-Year Financial Plan (2024-2028) Bylaw No. 8442, 2024
This is the final adoption of our annual budget. I have been writing posts outlining the various parts of the budget: the general fund, how we manage utilities, and the capital plan. One more to come! Watch this space!


Then we had three Motions form Council:

Supporting childcare development across the City
Submitted by Councillor Henderson

WHEREAS the City of New Westminster recognizes a shortage in childcare spaces across the region and is committed to supporting the development of additional local childcare spaces; and
WHEREAS the City will be updating current residential zoning bylaws as part of the work to reflect the Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing Provincial legislation;
BE IT RESOLVED that staff explore opportunities to amend the City’s current zoning bylaws to increase the allowable maximum of childcare spaces in residential areas.

There have been a couple of recent regional news stories about Zoning and Childcare. In PoCo a vitally needed childcare ran into a hiccup at rezoning that took a bit of work to fix. In Delta, they brought in a sweeping change to their residential zoning to allow home-based childcare (up to 8 children) in all residential zones, which is something New Westminster already permits.

Considering some significant changes are coming with new Provincial regulations, and childcare spaces are still a pressing need in our community as we have become a community of choice for young families, it is a good time to ask if there are way for us to remove obstacles to setting up more childcares across the City. This motion is preliminary, asking staff to do the work to determine what is viable given our staff capacity constraints and the pretty strict provincial regulations around childcare capacity, but I look forward to hearing back from staff. Council moved to approve this.

Closing possible loopholes in BC’s Elections Act as they pertain to municipal elections
Submitted by Councillors Fontaine and Minhas

Whereas to ensure a level playing field the Government of BC banned municipal candidates and elector organizations from accepting any direct financial donations from corporations, unions and non-for-profit entities; and
Whereas the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act continues to allow corporations, unions and not-for-profit entities to actively spend unlimited funds and reallocate internal resources to promote a particular municipal candidate and/or elector organization with their members or staff without any requirements for open and transparent public reporting
BE IT RESOLVED THAT a letter be drafted to the BC Minister of Municipal Affairs requesting that the following changes be made to the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act in time for the 2026 municipal election;
a. Any corporation, labour union or not-for-profit entity actively utilizing internal resources to promote an individual candidate or municipal elector organization within six months prior to the municipal election is required to publicly record and report to Elections BC the total funds expended;
b. Public reporting by the respective corporation, labour union or not-for-profit entity would include items such as the estimated use of staff time, overhead costs and marketing/promotion activities including those accessible to the broader public through social media;
c. A maximum of $500 of resources can be expended by a corporation, labour union or BC-based not-for-profit for the purposes of promoting municipal candidates or elector organizations in British Columbia with their members or staff during an election year;
d. Corporations, labour unions and not-for-profit entities are banned from pooling their resources so as to
effectively increase the maximum limit they can utilize to promote and market a municipal candidate or an elector organization
e. Only BC-based corporations, labour unions and not-for profit entities are permitted to undertake the election related activities listed above with all non-BC-based entities strictly prohibited from actively promoting a municipal candidate or elector organization
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT a copy of this motion be distributed to the Union of BC Municipalities and the Lower Mainland Local Government Association for their information

This motion got a rougher ride. There were a few attempts to amend it, but it was challenged by it being both vague in its intent but queerly prescriptive in its affect. That said, no matter how it is diced up, it seems to be asking the Province to change legislation in a way that would almost certainly face a challenge under the Charter of Rights.

To be clear, the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act already requires organizations who want to promote candidates or issues in local elections to register as Third Party Sponsors and report spending they do in support of promotion during elections. To claim otherwise is a falsehood. But this motion goes much further, in that is seeks to limit how any organization speaks to its own members about elections, and by extension about advocacy issues important to their members. This is not just a chill on free expression (protected undersection 2b of the Charter) but a chill on the fundamental right to organize, which is not only protected under Section 2d, but is a foundation of our democracy. I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but on the face of it, this motion would seem to challenge those protections in a way that is fundamentally undemocratic.

We can infer what legislation like proposed would mean for groups in our community. Would HUB need to register and track staff time spent talking to their own members about how candidates responded to the survey on active transportation issues? Would an LGBTQ or Trans Rights advocacy group being restricted from communicating to their own members their preference for an ally candidate over a bigoted one? Would a candidate who was running for office and happened to own a restaurant be able to hand a staff member a campaign pin without registering that transaction? Besides the policing challenge, the implications set up some pretty absurd scenarios where speech is curtailed during elections.

With turnout less than 30% during the last general election, we need measures that encourage more participation in democracy, not less. And we certainly don’t need legislation that restricts democratic association and expression protected in a free society. Council did not support this motion.

Participating in the Provincial Electric Kick Scooter Pilot Program
Submitted by Councillor Campbell

Whereas Active Transportation and the safety of vulnerable road users are priorities for New Westminster; and
Whereas the Walkers Caucus, HUB New Westminster, and the New Westminster community have expressed concerns around user group conflict between pedestrians, cyclists, drivers and eMicromobility users as we work to build out our Active Transportation Network Plan; and
Whereas the City’s E-Mobility strategy includes actions to incorporate eMicromobility into City planning and outreach and to advance supportive eMicromobility policy; and
Whereas the Province of British Columbia has extended the Electric Kick Scooter Pilot Project for up to four more years and is inviting new communities to join the program with updated terms;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT Council direct staff to evaluate the opportunity for the City of New Westminster to join the Provincial Electric Kick Scooter Pilot Program, and report back to Council with a recommendation on participation.

The Province has extended its kick scooter program, where they are asking cities to evaluate bylaws that permit the use of new mobility devices. This motion is asking for us to evaluate joining the program, as it will take a bit of staff time to write and integrate some appropriate Bylaws, it’s best if we ask staff to report back on the resources and opportunity.


And that ended the Council work for the week, though we also had a poem and other fun in Public Delegation, which you can see on video if that’s your wont.

Budget 2024 – Capital Plan

The fun part of the annual budget is the capital budget, because this is the part that pays for the things that we need to have a functional and fun city.

Like the rest of the budget, our Capital Plan spending is estimated out over 5 years. We have a plan for the amount we will spend in 2024, and a plan for the entire 2024-2028 period. There is a bit of flexibility built into this, and it is necessarily front-loaded. This is because staff cannot start the procurement process for capital goods and works until it is approved by Council, but commonly the time period between getting the approval, going to procurement, buying or building the thing, and paying the invoice takes more than one year. This means that every year a large number of things planned for year 1 actually get done in year 2, or maybe year 3, so the budget line item “carries over” to those years.

Here is the briefest breakdown of our 2024-2028 capital plan (the full plan, in all its 3 page 133-line spreadsheet form can be seen starting on page 212 of this report. The longer plan, in its 33-page 433-line spreadsheet glory can be seen in this council report from January):

Note we are currently putting the final touches on təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre, the single biggest capital investment the City has ever made, and it is not represented in these numbers. We still plan to spend up to $152 Million on buildings, roads, pipes, and equipment this year. We will almost certainly spend less, due to the “carry over” effect described above. In my pervious post I wrote about the utility investments (sewer separation, accelerated water upgrades, advanced meter infrastructure for electrical, etc.), so I will use this space to talk about some of the highlights from the General Fund.

Massey Theatre ($19 million)
When the Massey Theatre was no longer part of the School District’s plans for a new NWSS, there was no way they could justify taking money from education programs to cover its ongoing operation and upkeep costs, so decided it had to be demolished. Driven by community demand, the City Council at the time decided to take on the theatre and protect it for future generations. At the time, an engineer report suggested it would cost $18 Million to bring the theatre up to a condition where it will last generations. Those costs are now coming due. The City is currently investing in essential repairs and upgrades to keep the building safe and address some envelope issues, and to do some internal upgrades to improve accessibility and functionality. This is not the end of the work, but the beginning.

Pavement Management ($4.15 M in 2024, $19.4 million over 5 years)
Roads are expensive to maintain. When I was first elected to Council in 2014, we spent about $2.5 Million on “pavement management”. Even this was an improvement over the $1.5 Million we spent only 5 years before. This amount has ramped up significantly over the last few years, and we are now looking at $4 Million a year on average. Note, we have not added to the number of roads, nor is there a significant increase the number of cars (though cars have gotten heavier). This increase is partly due to inflation, and partly due to us ramping up our work to get caught up and improve the overall condition. Yes, we are doing a lot of different things in the City, but rest assured New Westminster is spending more than ever before on fixing the potholes.

Sidewalks ($690K in 2024, $4.95M over 5 years)
Between replacement of sidewalks and our enhanced new sidewalk program to fill gaps and make accessibility improvements, we are investing almost $5 million in sidewalks in this plan. This does not include the $1.4 million in pedestrian crossing improvements or special projects like the $2.2 million improvements to the McInnes Overpass.

Rail crossing Upgrades ($3.6 Million)
We have money in the budget for the upgrades that will lead to whistle cessation, with Sapperton being the priority area and safety improvements in Queensborough.

Street Light improvements ($2.4 million in 2024, $4.6 million over 5 years)
Street lights are an important part of building a safe active transportation system. As we upgrade and move to LED technology, the operational cost will go down, but a significant investment is needed to upgrade aging standards, especially in the Massey Victory Height neighbourhood.

Artificial Turf Fields ($3.2 million)
Yes, we are building a new artificial turf field, once we do the Parks and Recreation Comprehensive Plan and work with community to determine the best location. We are also replacing the end-of-life turf at the Queens Park all-weather field.

QP Farm upgrades ($500k)
This project will see amendment of existing structures to facilitate new year-round community programs including retrofit of the long narrow building with new plumbing and electrical, and both gazebo structures, new picnic tables, small huts, a new wetland area and drainage infrastructure, food trees, pollinator meadow, and more. The result will be a refreshed public space for education programs around food systems, youth programming, and fun space for kids. There might even be a mushroom wall included.

Trees ($1.2 million in 2024, $2.9 million over 5 years)
We are planting a lot of trees in New West as part of our Urban Forest Management Strategy, and have been successful at getting millions of dollars from senior governments to support this program. This means more street trees, with a new emphasis on Queensborough, and a few big projects like the front lawn of City Hall.


These highlights only make up 20% of our capital plan, there is a lot there in supporting affordable housing, IT upgrades, measures to implement our community and corporate climate plans, equipment upgrades for Fire and Rescue, and boring things like backhoes and sand spreaders and roof repairs. These are investments in the things that keep a city operating.

Budget 2024 – Utilities

This is the second in a series of posts about the 2024 Budget. I wrote recently about the general operating fund, and now am diving in to the utility funds.

The City of New Westminster has four utility funds. The financing of utilities are regulated by the Province and Public Service Accounting Board standards. As such, the money you pay in utility fees for your water, sewer, trash, and electricity are not “taxes” that feed general revenues, but can only be used to finance and run the utility. They must be accounted separately than general operational funds of the City and general taxation.

The Electrical Utility makes us different than other municipalities in the Lower Mainland (though there are municipal electrical utilities in Nelson, Kelowna, and a few other small communities in BC). That utility also has the unique feature that it pays a dividend to the City (it makes a profit), and because it is generally counted along with other utilities in comparisons between New West and other cities, it is also the source of some tired misinformation about our comparative taxes. But I’m tired of beating that drum.

All of our utilities have one thing in common – much of their budget is a result of costs passed down to us by larger entities. Water, sewer, and solid waste utilities pay Metro Vancouver to supply us clean water, treat our dirty water, and manage disposal of our wastes. The balance of the costs are operations of the utility (we need people to run and maintain the systems, test water, process payments, etc.) and capital costs (we need to build and replace pipes and pumps and vehicles). As such, the budgets are easiest to understand through a Lawrence Livermore style flow chart. So I’ll draw some of those, and talk about them.

The way these work is the vertical bars are (approximately) to scale, on the left are our sources of income and on the right are where that money ends up getting spent. Green are revenue sources, blue are operational expenses, pink are transfers internal to the city, and orange is interactions with our Reserves and the things we build through our Capital Budget. Each utility has a reserve, we put “surplus” every year into the reserve, and take money out of reserves to pay for and build things like pipes and pumps and trucks to keep the place running. Note all numbers here are rounded, and in the 000’s, and please recognize this is a bit of a simplification done to try to make the big systems more understandable. (I’d love to hear feedback about how this presentation works for you!)

Sewer Utility

Our main source of revenue is utility rates, though we also take in DCCs and other contributions to support our capital plan. Of the ~$31 million we take in, about 45% goes directly to Metro Vancouver to pay for the treatment of wastewater. This cost has gone up 14% in the last year, and is the primary driver behind our utility rates going up 8% this year. As you can see, the operational cost for us to run the utility (salaries, contractors, supplies) only equal about 10% of our revenues, so there is not a lot of cost savings to be found there.

We are planning for a $12.5 million surplus in 2024, which will all go into our Sewer Reserve, as will the $5.2 million we got from developers and senior government grants to support our capital program, which adds $17.7 million to the reserve. However, we are planning to spend $19.6 million on new infrastructure (pipes and pumps) and vehicles, which means we are planning to draw our reserves down by $1.8m, or about 5%.

Water UtilityAgain, our main source of revenue is utility rates, and the DCC/contribution part is much smaller in water this year. That has mostly to do with the timing of capital projects and our success at getting senior government grants for sewer work more than water work. Of the $18.5 million we take in, about 44% goes directly to Metro Vancouver to pay for the water. We spend less than 10% of our budget on operations, though with internal charges (the money other city departments charge the water utility for services), this cost is a bit higher than in sewers.

Our surplus in 2024 will be about $7.2 million, but we are planning to spend just over $12 million in new infrastructure and capital equipment in the utility in 2024. This means we will be drawing down the reserve by about $4.5 million, which represents about 20% of the reserve value. This is more than ideal, but with major sewer work being advanced by Metro Vancouver in Sapperton and West End, it is a good idea for us to do water upgrades at the same time, so you only have to tear the roads up once. Having a healthy reserve permits us to advance this work without borrowing money. I am asked often what the City is doing to find efficiencies and save money, this is a good example of one thing we are doing in the water utility – spending a bit now to save more money later. Our 5-year plan sees us getting back to 2023 reserve levels in the water utility by 2026 or 2027, so eroding reserves in the short term isn’t a structural budget issue, but a strategy.

Solid Waste Garbage and recycling are bit different than the other utilities, as the level of service provided to different parts of the community (house vs. strata, home vs. business, etc.) varies quite a bit, and although disposal charges handed down (mostly from Metro Vancouver) for taking in our waste still eat up almost 40% of all of our revenues, there is a much larger operational cost to solid waste. We need staff to drive those trucks and fuel for the trucks, because you can’t put your trash in a pipeline.

We have been running low reserves in the Solid Waste utility for quite some time, and are looking to build them up through this 5-year financial plan. As the “capital” is mostly trucks and bins, there is a shorter lifecycle than the pipes Water and Sewer put in the ground, so our annual Capital spend is perhaps proportionally higher than in the other utilities. However, over all the budget for Solid Waste is much smaller than the other utilities.

ElectricalOur Electrical Utility has a few unique aspects, but it functions like the other utilities we have. The electricity we purchase at wholesale from BC Hydro costs us just over half of our overall revenues, and the cost of day-to-day running of the utility costs about another 17% (or a little over $11 million). This leaves us with about a third of income that goes into our Capital Reserves or directly to the City as transfers. The transfer number here is large because it includes the dividend the City takes every year from electrical utility operational surplus and puts it in the general operational fund. This amounts to about $6 million that the City uses to offset property taxes in providing services that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to deliver.

The utility is spending a *lot* right now on a major capital upgrades. We just built a $30 Million substation in Queensborough, and are now rolling out Advanced Metering Infrastructure, which means 60,000+ new digital electrical meters and the hardware and software to integrate them into our IT network. This is a big, generational investment, and as a result we are drawing down reserves that were intentionally built up a bit to help support this work. Our 5-year Capital Plan has us building these reserves back up to the ~$37 million level by 2028, but at the same time, we are budgeting for a cumulative spend of more than $150 million in upgrading our critical electrical grid over the next 5 years. It’s a good time to be selling electricity, but it is also a challenging time to keep up with the demand for more service.

Summary
There is not a lot of change in these budgets compared to recent years, except maybe some increased capital expenditure. The annual increases are essentially the same as the last 5 or so years (sewer increase a bit higher this year, solid waste and water increases a bit smaller, both way lower than Port Coquitlam’s increases this year, but its not a competition!), and the budget drivers really don’t change – Metro Rates are going up to support their aggressive capital investments, and we pass that on. Compared to the region, our water and solid waste rates are about average (though it is hard to do apples-to-apples comparisons because all cities provide different services and rate schedules). Our sewer rates are still at the higher end regionally, because we still have a lot of older combined flow sewers. This has the double whammy of us sending more water to the plant than we should, and requiring higher capital investment to replace and upgrade those systems. Fortunately, we have been pretty successful at getting senior government grants to help offset some of those costs.

Which brings us into the discussion about the Capital Budget, which I will dive into next post.

Brand-o-lini

There is a principle known as Brandolini’s Law. I’m trying to run a family program here, so look it up to understand how it applies to what I am about to write about. I was pointed to some media reports and a Facebook thread about the City’s work on updating its logo, and the conversation is spiraling with misinformation. But in a vacuum of better information, this is inevitable, so I’ll take a bit of time to address the denominator of the Brandolini equation.

“The City is spending Half a Million on Rebranding to get rid of the Royal City”  is not an accurate description of the report that came to Council on Monday, so let me unpack a bit.

Here is the City Logo:

This logo was approved in 2008, during Mayor Wayne Wright’s second term. The old logo (a crest featuring the City’s Coat of Arms – you can still see it on some older City vehicles and equipment, which actually becomes important later in this story) was replaced by what we mostly use now, a St. Edwards Crown pictogram and a serif typeface. It looks a bit dated now, but was probably informed by the 150th anniversary of the City being imminent. It is a product of its time.

The City has been talking about a new logo for most of a year now. It was a topic of discussion through the last municipal election (perhaps an over-played hand), and in the 2023 budget discussions. Council actually approved this path forward back in June of 2023, but the roll-out has been slow due to staff priorities being elsewhere. Staff are now ready to move forward and wanted to inform Council before they went to the public.

By “move forward”, they mean hire a design consultant, and start a public consultation. This is envisioned as a two-phase consultation, where a committee of community members will be assembled to guide the consultation, and they will bring the larger public in through a full public engagement process. Council would need to approve any final design, and staff will need to guide the consultation, but the goal here is to have the public lead with the ideas, setting a vision, and working with a graphic designer to develop those into a refreshed logo. We have $40,000 in the budget to fund this work. Public consultation takes time if you want to do it right, and it takes a bit of an investment in this time.

There has been a $450,000 number thrown around about the cost of the rebranding, which needs to be clarified. Staff were asked last June what the “total cost to replace all letter head, decals, signs, etc.” and provided this response to Council in a public report:

“In response to Council’s questions regarding costs to rebrand City assets – i.e. re-decal vehicles and signage, and replace uniforms, stationary, and other branded materials – staff estimate a total cost across City departments to be approximately $450,000. It should be noted that these costs could be accommodated over time and within existing departmental budgets, with new products only ordered as existing stocks are depleted and/or replacements are required. This was the approach followed when the existing logo was introduced in 2008. For example, some City fleet vehicles continued to feature one of the previous logos until the vehicles reached the end of their service life and were replaced

So the $450,000 number isn’t a real cost, it is the estimated value of current branded materials. This is not a new spend unless Council for some reason decided to throw away all materials featuring the current brand and replace them immediately with the new logo. That would not be a responsible way to manage public assets. We will instead continue to use the current materials until they are exhausted and/or meet end of life, then will replace with new branded material instead of old branded material, like we did last time. This is why you can still see the old coat-of-arms crest on some older equipment and vehicles.

Still, $40,000 is a real cost, and some will argue it is not worth it. I disagree, as I think re-looking at our branding is aligned with the Community Connections and Belonging pillar in our Council Strategic Priority Plan. A logo is art, and it is art about us. It is healthy and vital for a community to have a conversation about what kind of art we would like to see represent us. Even having the Public Consultation will bring people together to talk about what they value in this community. This has a potential to be an interesting community building exercise. I’m sure Mayor Wayne Wright and his Council felt the same way in 2008.

I can perhaps also respond to a few of the points raised on Facebook, though I do not want to link directly, because that feels a little weirdly like “punching down” on innocent people who are just sharing their community concerns. So here is a bit of a retort to general themes, not specific people:

“Why not fix the roads instead?”
$40,000 doesn’t fix many roads. In our recently-approved capital plan we are investing more than $20 million on pavement management, road repair and upgrades. No money is coming from those investments to pay for this. We have Engineering staff dealing with roads, EcDev staff dealing with logos and the City’s brand.

“Why not invest in helping homelessness instead?”
I agree that homelessness in a rich country like Canada is an embarrassment. This is why we have never stopped advocating to the Provincial and Federal Governments to re-invest in affordable and supportive housing in the City and across BC. In my time on Council, we have approved every affordable housing project put before. 96 units of affordable housing are about to open on 6th Street by the high School, we just broke ground on 356 units of student housing adjacent to Douglas College, and have more than 100 units of deeply subsidized affordable housing approved by the City right now waiting for the Province to come forward with the promised funds to break ground. Meanwhile New Westminster continues to support the Homelessness Coalition, the Rent Bank, and the most aggressive anti-demoviction and anti-renoviction policies in the province, in order to keep people facing housing insecurity in their homes. We also announced this spring a $2 Million commitment to a Three Crises Response Pilot to directly support people suffering homelessness in our community. We can do all these things and have a community conversation about our logo, they are not mutually exclusive.

“Why are you erasing history?”
I don’t agree that updating a 16-year-old logo is erasing history, but it could be a great opportunity for us to talk about and call attention to our City’s history. I hope that people born here and people who chose to move here and make New Westminster their home are both engaged in a consultation about what a logo means. This is where the community building can come from, if we are open enough to hear other voices.

Anyhow, I hope this clarifies where we are going, and I hope everyone so passionate about the City’s logo on Facebook show up for some of the public engagement to come, because comments on Facebook are not recorded for posterity!

Budget 2024 – General Operations

It’s Budget time. The City is currently approving its annual budget, which is more accurately and bureaucratically called the 2024-2028 Five Year Financial Plan Bylaw. There is a lot that goes into a budget like this, and a lot to look at, so I’m going to spend a bit of time writing about it, and hopefully opening up the details so you can understand what you are buying when you write those Property Tax and utilities cheques. I’m going to start with breaking down the various part of the budget.

To understand how we budget, you need to understand the difference between the Operational part of the budget, and the Capital part. You also need to understand the difference between General funds and Utility funds.

The Operational part is the day-to-day running of the city and the programs we offer. On the expense side this is mostly paying staff to do the work, but also includes the cost of consumables we go through as part of operations, like gas we buy to run the police cars, paper we buy to feed the photocopy machines, and things like insurance and bank charges. The money going into this part of the budget mostly comes from property taxes, but also includes grants from senior government, sales of services, and other revenue sources. This is the part of the budget people most people pay most attention to, because this is the one that results in that all-encompassing narrative around the “annual percentage tax increase”.

The Capital part is the money we are investing in the things we need to run a city: buildings, roads, sewers and pipes, a vehicle fleet and computers. We have a five-year capital plan that we periodically adjust so staff can plan out purchases and schedule construction. Every year, we take surplus money out of our operational funds and transfer it to reserves that are then, in turn, applied to pay for the things in our Capital Plan. We can also (within some regulated limits), borrow money to pay for these capital investments.

The General fund is how we budget for the general operation of City services that are funded mostly through property taxes. This is how we pay for parks and recreation services, Police and Fire services, running City Hall and the Library, bylaws operations, planning and much of our engineering services.

Separate from this are Utility funds. In New Westminster we have four separate Utilities: water, sewers and drainage, solid waste, and electrical. All of these rely on utility charges for their revenue, and are completely separate from property taxes. We spend utility money on the utility, and it isn’t mixed with “general revenue”, with two exceptions. First, there are transfers from the Utility funds to the General fund related to staff working on utility files (“internal recoveries”), and transfers the other way, because the City has to pay for its own use of utilities (“internal charges”) out of the general fund. The second exception is the annual dividend paid to the general fund from the Electrical Utility.

Here is how the General Operating fund breaks down for 2024:

On the left is “money in”, on the right is “money out”. The things “below the line” like Amortization or our Tangible Capital Assets and Internal Charges (the money our utilities charge to our General Fund account for utility services the city receives) are separated out because they aren’t really money in-out of the City, but money moving between accounts or accounting categories in the City. The biggest of these is the $23.5 million surplus which is transferred to reserves so it can pay for the Capital part of the budget, which I’ll write about later.

Some people like pie, so here are two pie diagrams: where our revenue comes from, where our expenses are allocated:

This diagram shows how some of the narratives we would like to use around our budget are not exactly accurate. Ideas like “15% of your tax dollars go to Parks” belie the idea that your residential property taxes are only 40% of our revenue. And as all of these expense items are total spending of a department, they ignore that many of these departments recover a lot of revenue through their operations through fees or other sources. The Police category is a specifically difficult item, because the NWPD pay for a lot of things (IT support, Finance staff, fleet operations) out of their budget that other departments like Planning don’t – those are captured under Corporate Services for every department that is “in City Hall”. Still , if you want to know how money in the City is spent, the pies are a start, as long as you are comfortable with all of the caveats.

Next post, I’ll write about the Utilities budgets.