Monday, November 7, 2022

Metro Vancouver Regional District’s $2.3 Billion 2023 Budget

No Trespassing Sign on Cleveland Dam at Capilano River Head

The Metro Vancouver Regional District has a significant budget, as it provides our region’s drinking water, sewage treatment, and solid waste management.

When you get your property tax bill, you might notice a line item called “METRO VANCOUVER.” This line item is only a small part of Metro Vancouver’s revenue.

Metro Vancouver fees are built into the water and sewer user fees on your property tax bill. In Langley City, about 60% of these fees go to the regional district, while the City uses the remaining fees to manage and upkeep the local distribution system.

Metro Vancouver’s solid waste fees are embedded into the City’s garbage rate or the rates of private garbage collection companies, as they pay a weight-based fee whenever they use a Metro Vancouver Transfer Station to drop off garbage.

The Regional District’s 2023 budget will be $2.3 billion, with $1.082 billion for operating costs and $1.247 billion for building and renewing infrastructure. For a comparison of scale, the City of Surrey’s overall budget was about $600 million, and Langley City’s overall budget was about $58 million in 2022.

The following graphics provide a high-level breakdown of the budget.

Overview of 2023 Metro Vancouver Budget. Select graphics to enlarge. Source: Metro Vancouver

The 2023 budget will be about a 4.5% increase compared to the 2022 budget.

Please check out the full budget documentation at Metro Vancouver’s website for more information.

2 comments:

boomy said...

This year we experienced water rationing at the end of the summer season, evidence that in future years we will need more water. And yet water services and liquid waste services, which both rely on copious amounts of water, represent 71% of our 2023 budget. There are water savings to be had here from the obvious solutions like using less water, to more complicated, long term solutions that involve new ways to carry/transport our sewage that involves less water, water that one day will be needed for human consumption. Metro Vancouver needs to look at more efficient ways to transport our sewage, to reuse it as fertilizer and to mine from it certain elements that currently flow into our rivers & the ocean. This would be a triple win for Metro Vancouver, us. More water resources saved means less pollution, less sewage plant costs if one removes solids before they go to the plants and less water shortages or none!

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know the amount of produce, off-shore sourced or otherw use, that presently fertilizes with human sewage?