Municipal insurance premiums have made a significant jump in the last year for Kimberley, reflecting a province-wide trend of growing rates.
Premiums from the Municipal Insurance Authority have gone up by 12%, and the City of Kimberley may face a challenge to accommodate along with other pressures in the budget.
“While some of that will be covered by the 2% increase for inflation, we’re going to have to cut someplace else in the budget to make up that difference,” said Don McCormick, Kimberley’s Mayor. “We’re trying our best to keep our variable tax increase to the municipal rate of inflation, but we’re getting some significant pressures on things like insurance that are making that increasingly difficult to do each year.”
McCormick said that the City has been able to keep the variable tax increase to the rate of inflation for five consecutive years, but every year is becoming more of a challenge. He added that he commends City staff for their work on keeping a steady increase.
McCormick said Kimberley needs to keep bringing in new revenue sources to help mitigate the impact of growing costs of insurance and in other places in the budget.
“We have used asset sales to do that, certainly the $32 million in building construction that’s going to add significantly to the tax base. There are a number of places that we’ve been able to get new money, and we fully expect we’re going to be able to do that into the future. At least we’re going to work really hard at it.”