As 2023 comes to the end, New Westminster city council is getting closer to approving the city’s 2024 budget.
The budget process officially got underway in October, when council discussed the five-year capital budget. At a Nov. 27 workshop, council discussed 2024 utility rate projections for electrical, water, sewer and solid waste and on Dec. 11 council had a discussion about the operating budget – including options and proposed tax rates.
Coming up in the new year, council will have a Jan. 8 workshop on refinements made to the capital budget and a Jan. 22 workshop on refinements made to the operating budget. The proposed budget timeline presented by staff suggests that council could commence bylaw readings related to the 2024 budget on Feb. 5.
In recent weeks, the Record has published a number of stories related to various aspects of the city’s 2024 budget. These include:
- Big changes ahead for New Westminster City Hall in 2024 budget plan
- New West eyeing property tax hike in 8% range in 2024
- Budget 2024: Planning for housing comes with a cost in New West
- New Westminster is on the hunt for federal, provincial funds for budget items
- New West fire department may see a huge staffing boost in 2024
- New West's biggest-ever infrastructure investment needs to boost staff
- New West gears up for major funding opportunities in 2024
- New West seeks to boost community connections with new department
- New energy and climate action department proposed in New West's 2024 budget
- New utility rates to take effect in New Westminster on Jan. 1, 2024
With millions of dollars in the financial plan and hundreds of individual line items in budget documents, it’s impossible to report on all aspects of the budget. We’ve rounded up some of the topics raised in council chambers during budget discussions.
TACC staffing
The $114.6-milion təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre will open in April 2024. Reports on the 2024 operating budget included various scenarios related to city services, including staff of TACC.
Mayor Patrick Johnstone questioned the timing of some of the staff positions at the facility. He noted that some positions are included in Scenario 3 and questioned the impact of not funding those positons in the 2024 budget.
“Is that going to affect the operations in how we open?” he said. “What is that going to physically look like if those folks aren't hired within this budget cycle or the next budget cycle?”
Johnstone said he suspects the new facility will be busy as soon as it opens in the spring of 2024.
“I think a lot of people are going to show up to use this space when it first opens, once people start using it,” he said. “So I want to make sure that we're confident that we're going to be able to defer these things and we're not going to have a negative impact on the operations.”
Corrinne Garrett, the city’s senior manager of recreation services and facilities, said there will be a phasing in of the different positions in the new facility.
“Anything to do with the new facility, with new technology, with new infrastructure that nobody in North America has used yet, we want to onboard our operation staff as early as we can in the new year,” she said. “They will be involved in the commissioning process, so the commissioning of all these new technologies, so that when we do get to the point where we're open to the public, we have an operations team who is very, very well versed in the operations of that facility.”
Garrett said staff hope to begin the recruitment process for building service workers early in the new year. They’ll work alongside commissioning agencies to get the pool systems up and running.
According to Garrett the second phase of our hiring will be focused on administrative staff. She said TACC will have some systems that it hasn’t had in other civic facilities, so staff will be trained on that infrastructure in early spring.
Recruitment of lifeguards will begin in January or February, with training taking place in advance of the facility’s opening. Staff involved in youth and seniors programming will come later in the spring.
“It will not and we won't let it affect the opening of the facility,” she assured council. “Where we don't get funding … those positions won't affect the opening, but it may affect the programming and our auxiliary budgets. So we'll require an auxiliary hours to then fund those positions. And we look to again, do those asks over a number of years as we build out the staff team for this facility.”
Protect the trees
The care of new trees being planted in New Westminster made its way into a recent 2024 budget discussion.
Coun. Tasha Henderson said she attended a talk by master gardener Brian Minter, who talked about ways to ensure the success of newly planted trees. Given that the City of New Westminster is planning to plant 2,000 new trees, she questioned how it will ensure those trees are successful if it doesn’t fund staff positions related to trees.
“Scenario 3” in the city’s draft operating budget included $25,000 for additional supplies to support newly planted trees in 2024, including the care of about 95 new trees at the new TACC. Budget documents noted that more than 2,000 new trees have been planted in 2022/2023, and they require young tree care (stakes, water bags, probes) for approximately years to establishment.
“These materials for tree care, I'm wondering if they don't get that care, how are we going to ensure that they are successful if we don't invest in that?” Henderson said. “I know that $25,000 adds up quickly amongst these other things. But I'm just curious what sort of the plan B is if we don't include that in Scenario 2.”
Erika Mashig, the city’s manager of parks and open space planning, design and construction, said the city does need to increase its inventory of supplies for trees, such as water bags.
“They do get whacked by weed whackers, accidentally. They are damaged, vandalized; they come to end of life,” she said. “So a renewal of these resources are important to keep our, particularly our street trees, healthy, irrigated, especially with the long, dry summer months we're experiencing.”
If parks and rec doesn’t get this funding, Mashing said it would have to make do with what it has.
“We have we would have additional staff time on the water truck, manually probing water into the ground to water those new trees,” she said. “So it's a bit more staff time with the trade-off.”
Budget documents detail the need for additional arborist’s positions related to the city’s trees. “There is a clear need for an increase in the staff complement to meet tree management goals related to city policy resulting in increased planting and maintenance levels,” said documents related to the 2024 general fund operating budget.
Local business
Coun. Ruby Campbell is keen on budget initiatives aiming to support economic development activity in New Westminster.
Campbell noted that the draft budget includes funding for a business growth coordinator, which is “fantastic” as there’s much work to be done on that front.
With the 2018 to 2023 economic development strategic plan wrapping up this year, she questioned whether an updated plan would be forthcoming.
“That position will support the goals out of the retail strategy, the additional work that we've added to our economic development function through the new people-centred economy role, and will help facilitate that work so that we can continue to work on that economic development strategy too,” said Blair Fryer, the city’s senior manager of communications and economic development. “Without it, we just won't have the resources.”
Budget documents say the new staff role would support implementation of strategic plans and priorities (such as the 2023-2026 council strategic priorities plan and items in the city’s retail strategy), including development and actioning of processes and programs targeting retention and expansion of existing local business.
Fryer said one of the key functions of that role is to work with businesses that are emerging and trying to grow and expand, including hiring more employees and expanding floor space.
“In the report that we provided to council … we talked about all of the work that we were planning to do and what impacts would happen if we didn't have the business growth coordinator,” he said. “And that would effectively mean we slow everything down. And that would also include the updated economic development strategy. There wouldn't be as robust or we would be able to move far ahead with it in 2024.”
At the Dec. 11 workshop, council supported consideration of the business growth coordinator position in the 2024 budget.
Public services
At a Nov. 20 budget workshop, council received a series of staff memos outlining some of the major factors at play in the 2024 budget, including the opening of təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre, the creation of a new housing division, and the creation of a crises response pilot project to address the crises of homelessness, mental health and substance use.
Mayor Patrick Johnstone said a lot of these initiatives are a direct result of stuff that council has asked for – and items the community has asked for that council is committed to delivering. He said items in the budget align really well with council’s strategic plan in terms of addressing the need for housing, responding to crises and climate action, providing community services, and addressing staff wellness.
“I think one thing that's useful in this as we talk to the public is: what is it look like if we don't do these things?” he said. “I think that is an important message to give to the public and say, if we don't fund these things, this is what it looks like to the public and the community when we don't fund the things you've asked us for.”
Johnstone said council members have to be clear with citizens about the impacts of underfunding services included in the budget.
Johnstone also said he appreciates the “desire to find alternate revenue sources” in the city. He said that needs to be done in a way that recognizes the City of New Westminster is providing public services – and need to be services people can afford to access.
“I just want to make it clear that we are delivering public services to the greater public, and New Westminster is not the wealthiest community in the world,” he said. “And we want to make sure that we are we are making sure that our services are available to everybody in our community at all times. So that needs to be our priority. We are not going to we're not going to make money running a swimming pool, and that's OK; that's not what it's there for. It's there to make sure that people in the city have the services they need. And that needs to be in front of our mind when we start talking about revenue generation.”
Downloading report
Coun. Daniel Fontaine continues to press staff to compile a report about costs that have been downloaded onto the city from senior levels of government.
In January 2023, Fontaine and Coun. Paul Minhas presented council with a motion stating the city is facing “unprecedented” downloading from senior orders of government and has taken on the financial burden of operating a number of programs and services, as well as investing in capital infrastructure, that would normally be funded by the provincial and federal governments.
After several amendments were made to their original motion, council unanimously approved a motion to have staff to report back to council with an itemized list of expenditures and senior government revenues that the City of New Westminster has incorporated into the operating and capital budgets, which are typically considered outside of municipal jurisdictions and are not part of the city’s “core services.”
“We're in December of 2023, and that report has yet to come to council for review. Can staff comment?” he said at a Dec. 11 budget workshop. “I know it's going to be too late for this budget cycle. Is there any estimation at this stage as to when that downloading report will come back to council?”
Jacqueline Dairon, who was serving as acting director of finance at the December workshop, said she had looked at a sample report from the City of Vancouver. (In January, Fontaine told council that a report done by the City of Vancouver contained some “staggering” findings.)
“The amount of work that will be required to go into that is not something that we currently have the capacity for,” Dairon said, adding contracting out the work or hiring additional finance staff would help get that work done.
Fontaine questioned if any of the budget scenarios presented staff include staffing resources that would allow that work to be done.
“There is a request for additional finance support,” Dairon said. “A report of that nature is not something we currently have the capacity or staff to do.”
HR gets a hand
The City of New Westminster is looking to makes some investments in its human resources and information technology department in the 2024 budget
“We've had lots of conversations around the importance of investments to HR and IT,” said Coun. Tasha Henderson said at a recent budget workshop. “It is sort of the backbone to everything else.
Henderson questioned how staff determined if the department’s requests were in budget Scenario 2 or Scenario 3.
“We prioritized by looking at what was in the best interest and needs of our current workforce, and making sure that we're taking care of our existing workforce by looking after training needs, wellness, safety, etc.” said Richard Fong, the city’s director of human resources and information technology. “So that's kind of what differentiates between the two scenarios.”
