To be perfectly frank, we didn't think it would happen. But it appears the rabbit - a zero per cent net tax increase - is indeed emerging from Squamish council's budget hat, and we find ourselves applauding after all.
It wasn't a question of whether or not this council would balance its books - municipal councils, by law, can't do otherwise.
The question, rather, was how much an activist council with a full agenda, faced with an average property value increase of more than 25 per cent, would be tempted to dip into the cash cow to fund a few pet projects.
And they did - adding new staff positions like the Economic Development Officer and the newly-minted Director of Public Safety announced in this week's paper and funding concerns like the Sea to Sky Adventure Centre and the Wild Cherry Farmers' Market.
But even after adding some bells and whistles, the District of Squamish will be putting forward for public scrutiny this week a budget that proposes to take no more money from taxpayers in 2004 than it did in 2003.
That doesn't mean, of course, that everyone's taxes stay unchanged. The "mythical average taxpayer," as Mayor Ian Sutherland puts it, will pay exactly the same tax bill this year as last year, even though his or her home's value skyrocketed. In reality, your taxes will either be going down a few dollars if your home's assessment didn't quite match the market's meteoric increase - or up 20 per cent or more if your home, townhouse or condo was ahead of the curve. A lot of people whose properties in the mid-100s or mid-200s shot up $100,000 or more are going to find that a "zero per cent" tax increase feels like a lot more than zero to them.
Even so, what turns out to be a tax increase to some might even be forgivable by the taxpayers - those who voted in the current council, anyway. This council wasn't supposed to be preoccupied with fiscal responsibility. Other candidates in the election held nearly a year and a half ago now were the ones openly courting voters concerned with holding the line on taxes.
But it's Sutherland's New Directions-led council that ends up being able to present a budget with the fabled zero per cent net tax increase - an achievement that the previous council was never able to boast of, albeit in tougher economic times.
That said, it hasn't been a pretty process. Council's budget consultation process has been haphazard, its meetings all over the map, leaving dedicated council watchers (and even the media) guessing when council would next meet to attack its budget. For a council committed to "open and transparent government," they have plenty to improve on.
Let's see if they can put form and substance together in 2005.
