A closer look at Yellowknife's proposed 2023 budget

In three weeks, Yellowknife's new city council will approve a budget for next year. Right now, they face a budget proposed by city administration that comes with a 7.47 per cent property tax increase.

Administration made its pitch to city council earlier this month. They said infrastructure and program costs, and inflation, are rising, but the city's assessment base has stayed basically the same size. The tax hike is necessary, they said, to achieve all the plans laid out in the draft budget.

Several residents decried the proposed tax increase. They told CBC News it would add further stress to a population already struggling with the high cost of living. 

But taxes are just one part of the equation. This article compares parts of the proposed budget with previous years', and takes a look at what's at stake in 2023. 

The city proposed a budget that anticipates $112 million in revenues and $152.8 million in spending. It reflects significant increases, on both sides of the ledger, compared to five years prior. 

In 2018, the city brought in $82.3 million in revenues and spent $84.4 million. This means that by the 2023 budget year, revenues and expenditures are expected to rise 36 per cent and 80 per cent, respectively.

In an emailed statement, a city spokesperson said increases in revenues and expenditures since 2018 reflect "increased infrastructure services, programs, and citizen expectations, as well as general inflationary pressure."

On the expenditures side, 2023 is something of an outlier, with a sizeable jump in capital spending due to the new aquatic centre.

The money set aside for capital projects is $68 million, with $43 million going toward the new pool. The city has budgeted about $71.8 million in total for that project, and expects running the pool will cost another $1.8 million per year. Construction is scheduled to finish in 2024.

This major build comes after a referendum in which Yellowknifers voted in favour of the city borrowing $10 million to finance it. 

The new pool will "absolutely" affect people's property taxes in 2023, said former city councillor Julian Morse, who was in office during the referendum.

"It was also voted on directly by taxpayers, so that choice was made, and I think the implications were quite clear that it will impact property taxes over the next number of years that that debt is being paid down," he said.

According to the draft budget, the city expects to bring in $36.8 million in taxes in 2023. That's $2.7 million more than it's forecasted to take in through taxes this year, and $8.9 million more than it collected in 2018. 

To be sure, municipal taxes are just one source of income for the city — and they're not even the main one.