City Council finished their 5-year financial plan deliberations this week, settling on a 3.8% tax increase for this year.
Mayor Sharie Minions said while the goal is always zero, inflation usually prevents that, but Port Alberni’s building boom helped keep the increase down.
“Any tax increase is difficult. I think the average person would love to see our taxes go down; we all would,” she said. “We’re excited about how we’re building forward in Port Alberni because we are seing so much multi-family development, that is our pathway to long-term tax sustainability. You can’t grow a community and improve a community and invest in the assets you need to while also creating new amenities with single-family home development so we’re happy to finally be seeing significant growth in our tax base that we will be able to spread out, and eventually the goal is always to bring down taxes.”
Minions said all the key infrastructure projects are included, and the 3.8% increase represents one of the lowest consecutive increase of any island city over the past 5 years.
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