Lake Country can’t just be bedroom community, says mayor

The mayor of the District of Lake Country says the community needs to diversify its economy as it faces very big tax increases amid an exploding population.

Council is now eyeing a rise of 17 per cent this year as the population has ballooned by over 22 per cent in the last five years. Last month administration said a tax rise anywhere between nine and 19 per cent was being pondered.

There are now more than 15,000 people living in the community. That means it is contractually obliged to cover 90 per cent of the local RCMP service costs, up from 70 per cent.

Lake Country is also facing spiraling costs for other services, contracts, and wages throughout the district. Maintaining and upgrading aging infrastructure, especially the extensive road network, is another financial drain.

“We need to diversify our tax base,” Mayor Blair Ireland told a well-attended public meeting this week. ”We are a bedroom community, and the bulk of our taxation rate is on homeowners. We have a very small commercial area, and we have no industrial [tax base] to speak of at all.”

Ireland highlighted council’s priority to get the Lake Country Business Park built, which would sit on six lots between Okanagan Centre Road West and Glenmore Road. The district has requested the private land be removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve.

The district’s economic development efforts also include enticing more commercial enterprise including a thrust towards green, clean tech jobs.

But until that outreach produces results homeowners face daunting cost increases all round. While policing is the biggest financial burden, Ireland also spoke to the excessive amount of roads local residents need to pay to keep maintained.

“We have a lot more to maintain [per capita] than anybody else does,” he said. “There’s an undue burden on each one of us because we have so much road… we have something like 220 kilometres of road, and that’s extremely unusual for a small community,” he said, noting the road maintenance costs are up 120 per cent since 2017.

While the total proposed 17 per cent tax increase could yet be changed by council as more public feedback is received, the bottom line for homeowners is they’re facing hundreds of dollars more each year.

A one per cent increase results in approximately a $20 annual increase for the average single-family home. BC Assessment has determined the average single-family home in Lake Country in 2023 is valued at just over $1 million.

Such a homeowner would face a $340 dollar tax increase.

The district has encouraged residents to keep offering feedback via its Let’s Talk-Lake Country page. A record amount of 65 comments had been received by earlier this week.

Council is expected to have second and third reading of the 2023 budget later this month, with the final signing off set for March.