Maple Ridge city council approved a 2024 city budget with a 6.5-per-cent property tax increase at a Feb. 13 meeting.
Fire and police services were the major drivers of the increase, and the budget will see the hiring of 16 new firefighters at an annual cost of $2.74 million, and 12 new RCMP officers for $1.85 million per year.
Staff also asked for “housing acceleration spending including three new planner positions at city hall, and a development application project manager.
Councillors said the main issue was public safety.
“I’m comfortable supporting this, hopefully the community will see the benefits of it all,” said Coun. Judy Dueck. “At the end of the day we’re elected to make difficult decisions, and this is one of them.”
The one dissenting vote was from Coun. Ahmed Yousef, who said 6.5 per cent was too high, and he proposed a new spending package that would drop the increase to 6.2 per cent.
“This year is not the year to go for the bells and whistles,” Yousef said.
“Groceries are through the roof, mortgage rates are still high, housing is becoming more unaffordable for seniors on fixed incomes, and families that are struggling to make ends meet.
“So it’s on us to give people room to breathe – especially when we consider that there will be other layers of taxation that will be coming down – and not to tax them out of their homes.”
Mayor Dan Ruimy countered that an 8.2-per-cent tax increase pitched to council by staff a week earlier represented “all the bells and whistles.”
Through budget talks he advocates growing the city’s industrial and commercial tax base as the way to reduce the tax hit on homeowners.
“I firmly believe, 100 per cent, the way to a more prosperous future is building our economic development,” said Ruimy.
He added that a budget that doesn’t include “a stronger economic development piece” would be selling the city short.
The budget’s impact on the average residence in Maple Ridge will be approximately $150 per year more for city services.
Interim fire chief Dave Samson spoke to the need for more firefighters, saying calls for service have doubled during the past decade. They were 3,431 in 2014, and last year were 6,878. Half were medical emergencies.
He noted the full-time operational response staff – 11 firefighters on duty – has not changed since 2012, and added his crews respond to more calls per firefighter than their counterparts in the City of Vancouver.
RCMP Supt. Wendy Mehat noted that with Pitt Meadows no longer sharing in the operation of the Ridge Meadows detachment, 23 officers will be leaving to work at a new detachment in that city. She said there are key personnel who need to be replaced, including “frontline supervisors.”
If the city requests new officers this spring, new resources would be online in winter of 2025, she said.
She said there are 132 officers currently in the detachment, and compared that to Nanaimo with 100,000 population, and similar crime dynamics, that has 156 officers.
“With our without de-integration, I certainly would still be here, trying to request resources, due to the fact that we do need catch-up with population growth,” said Mehat.
READ ALSO: B.C. launches survey on catalytic converter thefts with 5 possible actions