Derek Kilbourn
Sounder News
The Gabriola Fire Protection Improvement District may see a budget and tax levy increase of 21.29% in 2026. That came during a report from interim Corporate Officer Marjorie Colebrook at the September 10 meeting of the finance subcommittee.
If approved, the total budget for the Fire District will increase from $1,406,023 to $1,705,374.
Operations on its own will increase 25.49% from $1,030,183 to $1,292,824.
Capital will increase 8.67% from $365,840 to $397,550.
The 2026 budget and tax levy will be up for discussion and approval by Trustees at the regular meeting of the Fire Board on October 1.
Last year, the 2025 budget and tax levy a budget increase of 37.5%.
At the time, the long range financial plan for the Fire District was to have a large increase in 2025, shrinking the tax increase each year, aiming to keep increases under 7% by 2029. In that long range plan, the District had planned for the 2026 levy to have a 14.17% increase over 2025.
Colebrook explained what this would add up to for a home valued at $500,000.
In 2024, that home owner would have paid $355 for Fire Protection taxes.
In 2025, $450. If the levy increase were 10%, 14.7%, 21.29%, or 30%, that home would pay $495, $516, $545, or $545 respectively, for fire protection taxes.
Driving the increases are factors like the cost of insurance (with additional apparatus in the fleet the vehicle insurance is going up.)
Operations for the fleet is also projected to increase from $60,000 in 2025 to $80,000 in 2026, with an increase in fuel costs, repairs, and inspections.
According to the District, training costs per firefighter and recruit have increased to due to two main reasons. One is the new costs associated with unionization which will increase hourly training rates and the second is ongoing increases to certification standards for example NFPA 10/10 which require more formal and ongoing training.
For the medical training, previously to 2025 training costs were supported out of the Don Elkington fund. That training fund has now been depleted and the District says ongoing plan for sustainable funding for training including EMR is to fund this out of the operational levy as is done by fire departments across the province.
The training budget was $30,339 in 2024, increasing to $65,000 in 2025 an 2026.
Fire Chief Will Sprogis said the medical portion of the training budget right now is small, because current firefighters are trained up.
Supplies and maitenance for medical responses in 2024 were budgeted at $2,685. The budget for 2025 and 2026 was $8,000.
A portion of that budget is to pay the Iridia, the company which provides the doctor to have medical oversight over the EMRs practicing within the Department.
Within the HR budget, Trustee David Chorneyko asked the committee to put forward a $50,000 budget for HR services, saying that the District needed to have a consultant come in to provide those services, given that it is currently in a lawsuit over bullying and harassment.
Trustees defeated the motion calling for the HR budget, after Trustee Diana Moher suggested the District look into what assistance might be available for free from government.
Moher said, “there’s an employer advisory committee that is recommended by a couple of different organizations to us, and they are free, and they will give us direction and assistance in how we move forward on certain things. And I think we should probably go down that road before we start spending $50,000.”
Another change to the budget suggested from Trustees was to increase the budget for the annual election of Trustees. The 2025 election budget was $4,000. Trustee Wayne Mercier suggested that budget be set to $10,000, and the Board consider having an advance polling day added to this year’s election.
Colebrook said there could also be consideration for mail-in ballots, but that would also require ensuring the legality of this, and ensuring security of ballots. She said it would require an estimated budget of $20,000 to $25,000 to look at doing mail-in ballots. Mercier said he would be flexible on the issue of mail-in ballots, as he understood the complexity of that. But, he said, “it will be difficult for me to support any budget at all that does not allow for advanced voting,,, that doesn’t provide that opportunity to the landowners. I think that’s really important.”
“Even if we spent $20,000 on the election, that would be something like 1.3% of the budget. And I think that the exercise with the democratic franchise is worth at least 1%.”
Trustee Moher said she had concerns, “not because I feel that it’s right or wrong, but whether or not we can actually follow through legally on it. And the biggest thing that the returning office has said to us is the security of the ballots. That we have to have to have to be able to ensure that advanced ballots are secure after it’s been done.”
Mercier said that he believed that part of the advance elections could be solved.
“Many other places do advanced voting….I don’t have a solution for that real problem off the top of my head, but I know that many, many solutions exist.
“My feeling is that people felt really, really strongly about it in the lead up to this election, there was a lot of public discussion when I was campaigning.”
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