Budget Overview

The City of Nelson’s Preliminary Draft Budget for 2025 is available for public feedback. The budget focuses on community safety and infrastructure, while addressing long-term inflation that has been raising costs for municipalities.

While the consumer price index has increased 20% since 2019, the cost of construction has soared almost 70%, which impacts many of the services the City provides, such as paving, replacing water and sewer infrastructure, and maintaining buildings.

Working to keep costs down

The City is dealing with overall economic challenges, including rising costs for labour, materials, insurance, replacement vehicles and more. We are doing our best to keep taxes affordable and cut back on discretionary expenses.

Staff have worked diligently to identify cost-saving opportunities. Each department scrutinized their budgets and identified areas where spending could be reduced or reallocated. For example, we are optimizing staffing levels to reduce overtime costs.

Staff have also been looking for other revenue sources to keep property taxes down. We are using new grant, revenue and leasing opportunities (such as renting out additional space at City Hall) to reduce pressure on property taxes.

Last year we took on responsibility for Kootenay Lake West transit service, tying it into our existing operations at a minimal cost. This added more responsibility for our existing staff, but funding from BC Transit covers more of their salaries.

Funding

The City’s operating and capital budget is funded by property taxes, grants from other levels of government and debt.

Revenue Breakdown

Go in-depth into the budget

Watch the Public Budget Meeting Videos

Budget Highlights

  • Safer Neighborhoods

    • Leaving space in the budget to hire two police officers to fill vacant positions and increase police presence on the streets
    • Turning the Community Safety Officer pilot program into an ongoing service to support our downtown
    • Increasing training, retention and recruitment to sustain our police service
    • Updating our 911 service to Next Generation 911 technology and adding a dispatch officer to provide better coverage and to support

  • Fire Department Investments

    • Planning for a new fire hall to replace the existing fire hall, which is over 100 years old and undersized, to ensure adequate fire protection as our community grows
    • Transitioning to third-party fire dispatch services
    • To ensure adequate firefighter deployment, we are adding additional career firefighters
    • Switching to healthier fire-fighting foams for $12K to protect our firefighters and our community
    • Leveraging grant funding to invest $71K in fire equipment and training to build our capacity

  • Transportation

    • Annual $1.2M investment in improving our roads and transportation infrastructure
    • $2.3M for the Transit Exchange project to support increased transit service levels – Primarily grant funded

  • Active Transportation

    • Annual ongoing investment in active transportation with a $100,000 investment budgeted for 2025
    • Completing a project to widen and enhance the Waterfront Trans Canada Trail Multi-Use Path at Lakeside Drive – 70% grant funded

  • Park improvements

    • $50,000 in annual upgrades for washrooms in public parks to keep our facilities in good order
    • $50,000 more funding for parks to maintain and enhance our growing number of park spaces
    • Fencing around basketball and bocce courts at Lakeside Park to support both courts to be used simultaneously

  • Future Planning

    • Investing $3.9M in capital maintenance at City-owned facilities throughout Nelson, including accessibility upgrades, elevator replacements and needed repairs
      • This includes the $1.7M Civic Centre restoration project – 73% grant funded
    • Adding a Capital Projects Coordinator and a half-time position for the purchasing department to lower delivery costs for capital projects and negotiate for stronger bids

  • Infrastructure Levy

    Adding a 1% infrastructure levy ($100,000) that will directly support much-needed investments in our aging assets. These assets include: $190M in buildings; $65M in roads, sidewalks and bike lanes; and a growing number of parks, playing fields and playgrounds.

What's does the preliminary budget increase mean to you?

Average Impacts