Photo: RDNO

The Regional District of North Okanagan board will debate possible ways to reduce one department's increased tax requisition requirement at a meeting Wednesday afternoon.

The Greater Vernon Parks, Recreation & Culture department will need a 43.1 per cent tax requisition increase to cover its 2025 budget.

But that number that may change as the budget is finalized, and is not the settled property tax increase for homeowners.

Upon request from the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee, RDNO staff have prepared a report on the possibility of deferring an annual fund transfer. To allow for the future purchase of parkland, each year, money is transferred to the Greater Vernon Trails & Natural Spaces Parkland Acquisition Reserve.

“The annual transfer has been built into the annual budget over the past number of years as budgets permitted, and often when long-term debt issues were either refinanced at lower rates, were paid off early or matured,” the report said.

The 2025 proposed budget has $865,000 going to the reserve, the same amount as in 2024.

In 2023, $788,000 was transferred to the reserve, and $588,000 in 2022. In 2021, $190,000 was contributed to the reserve, and in 2019, $70,000 was transferred.

According to the report, the strategy could withstand a one-year deferment if the RDNO plans to reinstate the $865,000 transfer in 2026.

“If a significant acquisition resulted in a shortfall of available funding in the near term, other reserves could be accessed to cover the shortfall,” the report said.

Staff said the longer the annual transfer is put off, the more likely it is that future parkland acquisitions will be negatively impacted and the strategy revisited.

The parkland acquisition reserve and parks developer cost charge reserve sit at $2.2 million and $3.3 million, respectively.

RDNO staff have presented five options for the board to consider, one being to keep the transfer the same, which would equal a 43.1 per cent tax implication.

Other options include doing no transfer, which would bring the tax implication down to 32 per cent, or reducing it by either 25 per cent (40.3 per cent tax implication), 50 per cent (37.5 per cent implication), or 75 per cent (34.8 per cent).

The tax implication percentages doesn't equate to the property tax increase for homeowners, but rather how much the tax requisition would need to increase for the five Greater Vernon Parks Recreation and Culture services.

The board will have a chance to discuss the options at its meeting on Wednesday.