First look at 2019 Langley City budget

Langley City staff and council have been busy over the past several months working towards a proposed 2019 financial plan and budget. An open house about the financial plan will be occurring shortly as noted below:

Date: February 21, 2019
Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Location: Finance Department Foyer (main floor), Langley City Hall

You can drop in any time during the open house to ask Langley City staff questions about the budget and provide feedback. There will also be a more formal opportunity to speak to council during a Committee of the Whole meeting:

Date: February 25, 2019
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Council Chambers, Langley City Hall

The following table shows the high-level changes between the 2018 financial plan and the proposed 2019 financial plan.

High-level overview of proposed 2019 financial plan. Select table to enlarge.

There is a proposed $3.8 million increase in expenditures for 2019, and I’ll post more details about why in future posts. The short of it is that it will result in a 6.98% increase in property tax. Because of how property taxes work in our province, not all property owners are impacted the same. You can read more about why this is the case in a previous post.

On average, single-family home owners ($886,095 average assessed value) would see an increase of $58 dollars in their property tax and user fee bill in 2019. Townhouse and apartment owners ($407,050 average assessed value) would see an average increase of $164 dollars. The proposed average increase for townhouses/apartments seems step compared to single-family as proposed in the 2019 financial plan, but as shown in the follow tables, over time this isn't the case.

Apartments/Townhouses*
Year	Average Change
2014	$0
2015	-$22
2016	-$39
2017	-$20
2018	$106
2019	$137
Total	$162.00

Single-Family*
Year	Average Change
2014	$50
2015	$92
2016	$71
2017	$105
2018	-$7
2019	$2
Total	$313.00

There were a lot of priorities that I heard during the campaign this fall from people about what they wanted addressed. I look forward to sharing over the next month or so about how the proposed 2019 budget will address those priorities.

*Does not include users fees such as water and sewer charges.