Photo: Luc Rempel

Sicamous announces residential tax rate set at 4.17 per cent

The District of Sicamous has finalized its residential tax rate at 4.17 per cent for 2025.

At a meeting on April 23, Bianca Colonna, chief financial officer, presented council with the finalized tax rate bylaw and explained the factors that went into the finalized rate.

“Overall, tax bill and municipal services for water and sewer, we’re at about 4.14 per cent so pretty good,” she said.

“I actually had a call with our association for the province, and about, I would say, 80 per cent are within the 1 to 5 per cent mark. It's nice to see that we're falling within the group.”

The entire overall rate includes several other factors including remittances for RCMP, Columbia Shuswap Regional District, hospitals, libraries and schools.

She told council the district policy has been to maintain parity of tax rates between the tax classes and have mostly succeeded at keeping all the increases to approximately 4 per cent.

“So when we say a 4 per cent increase, as long as your assessment went up by the average you should see that increase,” she said.

She added Sicamous pulling out of Shuswap Tourism helped lower the tax requisition from the CSRD.

Mayor Colleen Anderson thanked Colonna and the rest of council for their work keeping this year’s tax rates low, but she stressed the importance of municipal taxes.

“Nice job keeping taxes nice and tight,” Anderson said. “But you know, at some point they may not always be this tight.”

She added it is important for residents to remember what their taxes pay for.

“Taxes pay for our infrastructure and pay for our services and pay for, you know, the town looking like it does look,” she added. “We've got public works out there, cutting the grass. ...And paving going on and parks going in.

“So when we're in these discussions at this time of year, talking about taxes and tax increases, we also have to keep in mind that we do need reserves and we need that emergency funds as well.”

The tax bylaw will be officially adopted at a special council meeting on April 28, with tax notices expected to be mailed out soon after.