The first in a series of articles about City of Courtenay finances

T he dominant issues in local elections usually revolve around money. It makes sense, because municipalities rely almost exclusively on their share of the property tax to keep the community’s water taps flowing and its toilets flushing.

Property taxes are the price homeowners pay for the services the municipal government provides. And just like the cost of eggs and gas, property taxes go up every year.

Not all voters complain about their taxes – many recognize the value they receive in services like recreation, policing, garbage collection and water and sewer infrastructure – but most pay at least casual attention to the annual increase of this household expense.

However, when municipal elections roll around every four years, the property tax burden, and generally how the local government spends your money, takes a front row seat.

This is particularly true in the absence of any overriding issues. In well-run municipalities, new candidates seeking to upset the incumbent mayor and council members historically point fingers at “unnecessary spending” and make promises to “lower your taxes.”

It’s an age-old tactic. What voter doesn’t want lower taxes? But what voter also wants the downside of lowering taxes, such as park closures, reduced hours at recreation centers and pot holes going unfilled in front of their homes?

Every mayor and council member struggles with this problem: how best to balance maintaining services and making improvements with the least necessary tax increase.

It’s difficult because a community has diverse wants and needs. And also because, according to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, local governments are responsible for 60 percent of all infrastructure in Canada but receive only $0.09 out of every dollar of taxes paid in Canada.

Nevertheless, the city finances have enveloped this year’s races for public office.

New candidates for council aligned with former councillor and mayoral candidate Manno Theos are following the “spending is out of control” and “taxes are too high” playbook to build momentum for the Oct. 17 elections.

Theos and his supporters have attacked a handful of projects undertaken over the last four years – such as the Sixth Street pedestrian and cycling bridge, a Back Road traffic circle, bicycle lanes and more – as unnecessary spending on things they believe the community doesn’t want. They also propose to cut taxes and seem to suggest that the city has too many employees who are paid too much money.

“The facts are that this council is doing the politically hard stuff that previous councils were afraid to do,” says incumbent Councillor Will Cole-Hamilton. “Even though they knew these things needed to be done”

These are valid points of view, even though their social media platforms overflow with rage-baiting posts and insulting personal comments that undermine their own credibility.

The public must accept and election challengers should respect that when voters give a mayor and council members the responsibility of deciding how to spend their taxes, they should expect that each group will do it slightly differently.

One mixture of council members might prioritize building a bridge while a different group of councillors would build a convention center. Yet another bunch might choose to spend no money on anything at all.

And it may also be true that each group could have equal amounts of support from separate parts of the community.

The real question for voters, then, is not whether money was spent on this or that, but whether the city’s finances have been managed competently.

So let’s look at some facts.

PROPERTY TAXES

To assess whether a municipality’s property taxes are high or low, the province applies its tax rate to a representative house, a median-value property sometimes called “a typical home.” This standardization makes it easy to compare the tax burden between municipalities.

It’s important to note that about one-third of the property tax total goes to schools, the regional district and hospitals. The municipality is required to collect the total tax and redistribute it.

The total 2025 residential taxes and charges on a representative house in Courtenay was $5,717. That’s lower than both Comox ($5,743) and Cumberland ($5,776).

The accompanying chart shows that Courtenay’s 2025 tax burden was slightly below the middle of similar-sized cities, and near the bottom of Island municipalities.

City of Courtenay staff chart

In the 2026 taxation data released last month, Courtenay’s taxed $6,115 on a typical house. That’s still lower than Comox ($6,121) but slightly higher than Cumberland ($6,049). Here are a few other comparisons from the provincial data, which you can see in total here.

– Langley:: $7,274
– Penticton: $6,190
– Squamish: $8,130
– White Rock: $10,015

The 2026 provincial data shows that the tax burden on Courtenay homeowners is about the same as on residents of similar communities. It’s higher than some and lower than others. It raised taxes by about the same amount as Comox and by less than Parksville.

We have not yet seen any social media rage of “unnecessary spending” in Comox or heard of any candidates there selling the “I’ll lower taxes” promise. Although it did build two controversial traffic circles this year.

If, as the data shows, the tax burden on Courtenay homeowners is not significantly different from similar communities – and it is lower than most – then the claims by some of the new candidates that the city’s taxes are unreasonably high cannot be accurate.

Perhaps Manno and the other candidates simply believe that taxes in general are too high. It’s a valid point of view, but not a fair or meaningful way to assess the city’s financial competency.

MANAGING CITY ASSETS

Municipal governments have a limited role and responsibilities. They primarily operate and maintain local infrastructure like roads, water, sewer, public works and garbage collection. They maintain and operate parks and recreation centres. They license businesses, create Official Community Plans to dictate land use and zoning. And they provide fire, police and emergency services.

Connected to those operations, the City of Courtenay has $896 million in assets, which includes water and sewer pipes, roads and parks. Much of it was created 50-plus years ago.

The city estimates that about 10 percent of these assets have been overdue for replacement.

That’s because councils prior to the 2018 election, on which Theos served, had taken a Do Nothing approach. They put off improvements and fixed things only when they broke. Emergency repairs typically cost four times more than planned maintenance.

And when they did repair or replace assets, they funded it with debt.

The Do Nothing strategy was effective in keeping tax increases temporarily and unrealistically low. But in reality those previous councils were just pushing the tax burden of unfunded liabilities onto future councils and taxpayers.

The need did not disappear. The cost just escalated.

“The facts are that this council is doing the politically hard stuff that previous councils were afraid to do,” says incumbent Councillor Will Cole-Hamilton. “Even though they knew these things needed to be done”

For example, when council first recognized that the Fifth St bridge required some repairs, federal and provincial grants would have covered two-thirds of the cost, leaving only a third for local taxpayers. But then-mayor Larry Jangula and former councillor Theos did not prioritize the project.

When the bridge repair could no longer be delayed for public safety concerns, the current council had to ask for an extension to the grant. But the cost had now doubled.

As a result, grant funding only covered one-third of the cost. Local taxpayers paid more.

The planned 2027 water metering project is another example. When it was first discussed, some 14 years ago, the cost estimate was $16 million. But then-mayor Larry Jangula again chose not to push it forward.

Now, as drier climates make water conservation necessary, the price to install meters in Courtenay has jumped to $32 million.

The ideology behind previous councils’ Do Nothing philosophy trickled down to the staff and created a corporate culture of avoiding new projects. In reality, previous councils had also kept staffing levels too low to do anything but the bare minimum.

“The days of two percent tax increases are not coming back anytime soon,” says retiring two-term Councillor Melanie McCollum. “Because to achieve that would require going back to doing nothing, stopping improvements, reducing services and cutting staff.”

The current council, most of whom were first elected in 2018, including Cole-Hamilton and McCollum, has adopted a more structured two-prong approach to financial planning over the last eight years.

They passed a comprehensive Asset Management Bylaw in 2019 and later created a Strategic Infrastructure Investment Program (SIIP).

ASSET MANAGEMENT BYLAW

Courtenay was the first city in British Columbia and the second in all of Canada to enact an Asset Management Bylaw. Councillor Cole-Hamilton introduced the motion immediately after taking office.

The bylaw, which only impacts new projects, directs council and city staff to explicitly consider full life-cycle costs — including planning, procurement, creation, operation, maintenance, renewal and decommissioning — when making decisions regarding the acquisition, upgrade or replacement of Tangible Capital Assets.

And it mandates the evaluation and consideration of natural assets (for example, wetlands, urban forests, natural drainage pathways) alongside or as alternatives to traditional engineered and constructed infrastructure wherever feasible.

“The goal of asset management is achieving sustainable service delivery: ensuring that current community services are delivered in a socially, economically, and environmentally responsible manner that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” said former Chief Administrative Officer David Allen in 2019.

Since then, Courtenay has based its capital budget on up-to-date detailed information about what assets have failed and which are projected to fail within two years. It’s complicated work using a computerized system the city developed to help operate all the existing assets for the longest possible time and the lowest possible cost over their lifespan.

“Managing our assets involves identifying all the renewal needs, planning the work to avoid disruption of service and having a long-term financial strategy to pay for it,” Cole-Hamilton said.

“This means tax increases sometimes but it heads off bigger financial problems and potentially huge tax increases down the line.”

STRATEGIC INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT PROGRAM

In addition to the Asset Management Bylaw, the city created a Strategic Infrastructure Investment Program (SIIP) three years ago to address its annual asset renewal shortfall of nearly $9 million.

The program’s goal is to set aside funds to maintain the $896 million of assets that already exist. So that when roads, water lines and other assets need repair or replacement the city can avoid massive borrowing that creates debt.

The general rule for municipal infrastructure expenses is 80/20. The initial cost is 20 per cent and the operation, maintenance and replacement is 80 percent over the assets’ lifetime.

To save this money, the city began adding a 1.5 per cent tax increase three years ago that will grow incrementally and compound – 1.5 percent the first year, 3.0 in the second, 4.5 in the third and so on – each year for 10 years. Then the fund will be large enough to maintain its existing infrastructure without borrowing.

“The goal is to not borrow from the future to pay for fixes today,” said McCollum. “People who are using an asset should pay the cost of eventually repairing or replacing that asset when it wears out.”

With these two key initiatives, this council has created a structured work plan, for the first time in decades. McCollum says it took political courage to do, because nobody wants to pay more taxes, “but everybody wants a well-run and maintained city.”

Councillor Doug Hillian, a 17-year council veteran, says any candidate promising to lower taxes must identify what services and which staff they are planning to cut, “because the cost of running a city goes up with the cost of living” higher taxes are necessary each year to maintain the existing level of services.

“People are moving to the Comox Valley to escape wildfire smoke or extreme weather in other places, so the taxes here don’t seem to be an issue,” Hillian says. “In fact, taxes here are the same or lower than where they came from and our taxes are comparable to similar sized communities around the province.”

NEXT: Can municipalities be run like a business? And, later, a look at Courtenay’s Capital Plan and its debt.