'Trying to improve our future': 9.4% tax increase passed in 2024 Brandon budget

Brandon residents will pay 9.4 per cent more in taxes this year after city council passed a budget that the mayor says will improve the city's future.

"I'm proud of this budget. That was a very difficult budget to do. I think it will serve the city well," Mayor Jeff Fawcett said Saturday.

"It delivers on what we need, and it saves on what we don't."

Fawcett said while he sympathizes with residents, the tax hike will create better financial stability in Manitoba's second largest city in the years to come.

"We realize that it is uncharacteristic for what we've been doing, but it is based on trying to improve our future situation," he said.

"We could have done some of the historic things we always have done to try to just drop the number, but where does that stop?"

Budget deliberations were held Friday and Saturday, with tensions running high during debate over the tax increase.

Eight councillors voted to pass the budget, while the other two — Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) and Coun. Bruce Luebke (Ward 6) — opposed the budget.

They both said the tax increase was the reason they could not support the budget.

Berry said it's the second time in his 14 years on council that he's ever done so.

"I do not feel good about doing it, but the realistic facts are at a 9.4 per cent increase … I just feel that this is a hard increase for people to take," he told CBC News.

He said council could have done a better job over the last fiscal year to bring that number down, and it will have "a lot more work to do" at making the city an affordable place to live.

Police, infrastructure spending

The tax hike comes after a city-commissioned report from accounting firm MNP released last December said Brandon's taxes were 47 per cent lower than comparable Canadian cities.

The report said the city could consider either increasing taxes by 13 per cent every year from 2024 to 2027, followed by three per cent increases annually from 2028 to 2033, or it could bump taxes up nine per cent each year for the next decade.

"We knew from the MNP report that this budget would be a challenging one," Fawcett said. "It was very clear city council had to strike a new balance between sustainability and continued affordability."

This is the first four-year budget the city has ever created, the mayor said.

"It helps make the decisions today not based on just today, but what are we building to the future," Fawcett said.

It includes spending on more police officers, an expansion of the police cadet program downtown and more paramedics, which will allow an additional ambulance to hit the streets.

The budget also includes $3.9 million in provincial infrastructure funding that will go toward a new ice plant at the Brandon Community Sportsplex, upgrades to a water treatment plant, improvements to land drainage to help with flooding prevention, and the creation of a medical doctor recruitment and retention program.

Fawcett said he hopes to secure funding from the province and the federal government on future projects.

"We are a growing city, and we need to be active with the federal and provincial government and we need to be further ahead than we are."

'Where we've been left'

Brandon Chamber of Commerce president Lois Ruston said the city is walking a fine balancing act of keeping its finances sustainable while not stifling businesses.

"[Businesses] are facing many struggles, and this tax increase is only going to add to that concern," she said.

The chamber had been advocating for staged tax increases for years as taxation remained flat, she said.

"Unfortunately, this is where we've been left as a community, and our municipal government is in a place where they had to consider tax increases to be able to sustain the services and development."

Ruston did praise the move toward four-year budgets, saying it makes it "much easier" for residents to plan ahead.