Colwood looks to cancel planned property tax increase

Colwood City Hall is seen in this undated file photo. (Colwood.ca)

Victoria — Colwood city council is looking to cancel a planned tax increase at its committee of the whole meeting this week due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The city had planned to hike property taxes by 3.5 per cent this year.

Last week, the City of Victoria announced it would not increase taxes on commercial and residential properties in 2020. Now Colwood is looking to do follow in Victoria's footsteps.

Some measures now being considered include temporarily suspending contributions to Colwood's new infrastructure replacement plan and delaying capital projects for six months.

"Part of the reason I'm going to be encouraging that is when we come out of COVID there is going to be a lot of money coming from the federal and provincial governments to kick start our economies," says Colwood Mayor Rob Martin.

"I think that the governments are going to be saying to us as municipalities, 'Do you have shovel-ready projects that are ready to go?' And one of the things that we're really focused on in our city is making sure that our staff is working very diligently, and really hard presently, to make sure that we have those shovel-ready projects ready to go."

Colwood council will also consider the challenges presented by reduced revenues, including the loss of a quarterly revenue-sharing cheque with the Town of View Royal, gleaned from the now-closed casino.

That cheque makes up one per cent of Colwood's total budget.