In most BC municipalities, August is free of formal Council meetings. Langley City Council's last meeting before this August break was on July 29th. At that meeting, we address three items.
Like most municipalities in BC, Langley City needs to increase its investment in infrastructure to ensure that we are appropriately renewing our roads, water mains, sewer lines, parks, and public facilities. Over the years, Langley City Council has been increasing the property tax allocated to infrastructure projects to ensure we more adequately fund infrastructure renewal. This gap is sometimes known as infrastructure debt.
Two significant parts of our City's budget are ongoing operations and one-time capital projects. An example of ongoing operations is funding our firefighters. An example of a one-time capital project is the renewal of Douglas Rec Centre to add additional childcare spaces.
Provincial law requires that municipalities have balanced budgets, so we must budget conservatively. This requirement means we generally have a surplus of operations funding at the end of the year. Staffing vacancies, variable revenue from redevelopment, and unexpected revenue from other levels of government create surpluses. Our surpluses have ranged from $160,000 to $5,300,000 since 2015. These surpluses are unpredictable. By convention, we have transferred any surpluses to our one-time capital project reserve accounts, which are like savings accounts. We didn't have a formal policy for this practice. Council asked staff to create a formal policy earlier this year. At the July 29th meeting, Council formalized this practice by adopting "CO-83: Allocation of Operating Budget Surpluses." As I noted earlier, we want to reduce our infrastructure debt, and every little bit helps.
The City has various reserve accounts, just like you might have different savings accounts for various purposes. Council asked that staff create a new reserve account where we put our surpluses to increase transparency and allow us to allocate these funds to specific projects.
Langley City is part of School District #35, which also includes the Township of Langley. Over the years, redevelopment projects in Langley City have contributed over $2 million to the school district to acquire land for new schools. These new sites have all been in the Township of Langley. You can read more about this in a previous post. The short of it is that City Council formally objected to the latest 2024 Eligible School Sites proposal. After some discussion with the Chair of the School Board over two weeks, Council approved the 2024 Eligible School Sites proposal and will be working with the School District over the next year to identify a new school site in Langley City. This site would be included in a future Eligible School Sites proposal.
Finally, City Council has been working with other municipalities on the Crime Severity Index and reducing its misuse. Council approved issuing a press release, which you can read more about on the City's website.
The next Langley City Council meeting will be on September 9th.
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