The municipality’s 2025 draft budget includes a 9.5 per cent raise in local property taxes.
The property tax raise is the same as last year’s jump, and is also predicted to be the same next year according to the Five-Year Financial Plan. There’s expected to be a significant decrease after that, with five per cent raises forecast between 2027-29. Overall the municipality expects to generate just more than $787,000 in revenue from the increase this year, bringing the overall operating budget to approximately $9.03 million.
The effective rate of the tax increase will be lessened though by a little more than $100,000 of revenue which came as a result of non-market changes to the assessment roll. This includes added value from new homes being built, reclassification of properties, or new rolls entirely from subdivision of properties. This essentially makes the property tax increase eight per cent for 2025.
To translate this into real dollars per household the value of an average residential property on Bowen is calculated, which this year comes out to $1.596 million, up $11,000 from last year. This results in an average property tax bill of $3,831, a jump of about $284 from last year when factoring in the eight per cent effective tax increase.
Following the release of the Five-Year Financial Plan during last week’s Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting, the public consultation period for the budget is now underway. There will be a virtual open house to discuss the budget on February 20 at 1 pm, with an update presented to council on February 24. Another virtual open house takes place February 27 at 6 pm ahead of the end of public consultation on March 7. A final draft is expected to be presented later that month, with adoption in April.
Last week’s COW detailing the draft budget focused on general funds which every property pays, and did not include discussions about water or utilities charges. A COW meeting will take place on February 18 to discuss the utilities budget.
Stay tuned for a closer look at capital projects and what each municipal department has planned for the year ahead.
