(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

Kamloops homeowners may get a steep tax bill next year.

The City of Kamloops is looking at a potential 10.81% rate hike in 2024, largely due to increasing contract costs.

A staff report outlined several pieces of the budget in a report, which is scheduled for a committee of the whole meeting, Nov. 28.

The budget includes a roughly $14.5 million increase over 2023 with a total of more than $134 million.

The staff report noted that the city is facing "lingering effects" from the COVID-19 pandemic with continued supply chain issues and inflation pressures.

“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, city operations and service delivery have been anything but normal," the report read.

Most of the tax hike, however, is due to rising costs for city employee union contracts, the RCMP and BC Transit, along with software and vehicle fleet maintenance, according to the report. In total, those account for $10.2 million and 7.6% of the rate increase.

Only 1% of the rate hike is attributed to inflation, while another 2% is due to projects previously approved by council. The biggest cost of those is $1.5 million to increase RCMP members and staff.

Staff noted city revenues have returned to normal since the pandemic, expecting that to alleviate some of the new budget strains by $1.9 million.

On top of the increasing cost of the overall budget, staff asked council to approve $1.3 million in funding for the Build Kamloops initiative, which is an initiative centred around funding and planning new civic facilities. Without the Build Kamloops funding, the property tax increase would instead be 9.8%.

Council will consider the proposed tax rate increase on Nov. 28, but it's still early in the 2024 budget planning process as council has months to finalize its budget.

The full report can be found here.

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