Nanaimo City Council is making final budget refinements prior to passing the 2025-2029 financial plan next month. (File photo/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Ian Holmes

budget discussions

Nanaimo Council adds clean-up resources as budget process nears end

Apr 17, 2025 | 1:24 PM

NANAIMO — Bolstering cleanup capacity in response to encampments and social disorder around Nanaimo has been included as a 2025 budget line item.

At a Wednesday, April 16, finance and audit committee meeting, City Council sided with advancing the hiring of a full-time superintendent in September, as well as more immediate on-call contractor support for larger jobs ($30,000 this year and $75,000 in 2026).

As a result, the meeting was told this year’s projected property tax rate hike nudged up slightly to 7.8 per cent from 7.7 per cent.

A typical single-family home in Nanaimo is expected to see a property tax bill of a little over $3,000 this year, with a further $1,000 for user rates (water/sewer/curbside collection).

Coun. Ben Geselbracht said the clean team funding bump provides additional service faster and is also more affordable than another option.

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“The superintendent is hired and there’s money to immediately start services through contractors, and it doesn’t close the door in later years to actually hire the FTE’s (full-time equivalent) to build a City clean team,” Geselbracht stated.

Other councillors echoed the importance of supporting public space clean-up work, currently provided by a pair of two-member, full-time workers.

Bill Sims, the City’s GM of engineering and public works, said the supervisor position would better support the expanding Community Safety Officer (CSO) program.

“Where we’re struggling with capacity is the supervision, we have a supervisor now that’s looking after close to 20 staff — that’s spread far, far too thin, and that’s really impacting our ability to provide the service,” Sims said.

Public safety, primarily involving Nanaimo RCMP, Nanaimo Fire Rescue, and the City’s CSO program, will absorb nearly 40 per cent of the City’s 2025 anticipated operating budget of $215 million.

Wednesday’s meeting reviewed substantial investments the City made in response to social disorder issues in recent years, including more police officers, firefighters and the launch of the 12-member CSO program in 2022.

City of Nanaimo finance director Wendy Fulla said six additional CSO officers are budgeted to be hired this year (effective April 1), followed by a further four next year.

In reference to the City’s heightened public safety investments, Mayor Leonard Krog said this is what senior government downloading looks like at its worst.

“We’re having to look after the issues that have been hoisted on our shoulders and the shoulders of every municipal government in the province,” Krog said.

A second potential new budget item of enhancing road maintenance was not implemented on Wednesday, with Council opting to revisit the issue next fall as part of budget discussions for the 2026-2030 financial plan.

Nanaimo City Council is scheduled to entertain the first three readings of the 2025-2029 financial plan on Monday, May 5 and then give final adoption the following week.

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