A bylaw to increase a wide range of fees and charges over the length of the current city council's term was advanced to final reading on Wednesday.
Most of the hikes are three per cent per year for each of the next four years and are mostly in answer to inflationary costs, council was told.
Exceptions include garbage collection, where an across-the-board two-per-cent rise is on the line.
Final approval pending, households using small containers through the automated collection service will pay $38 per quarter year 2020, rising to $40.25 in 2023. Medium containers will cost $50, rising to $53. And those using large containers will be charged $60.75, rising to $64.50.
Three per cent increases will be applied to the so-called subsidized services - namely the city's pools, arenas, parks and fields, as well as the Civic Centre and Prince George Playhouse - where the cost of running them is covered in part by the users through admissions and rents with the rest paid for through the property tax levy.
Sales taxes not included, a single-visit admission to either of the city's pools will stand at $7.11 in 2020, rising to $7.77 by 2023 for an adult, while for a child, it will be $3.81 rising to $4.16, and seniors, students and youth will pay $5.36 rising to $5.85.
The family rate will be $5.36 for the first adult and $3.81 per additional family member rising to $5.85 and $4.16.
The standard rate for ice time at the city's arenas will be $333 per hour rising to $364 while the discount adult rate for prime-time ice will be $209 rising to $228 and, for non-prime, $168 rising to $183.
Council still reserves the right to review the rates each year but it was also noted that user groups like men's hockey will now be able to better predict what their costs will be down the road.
The increases for the subsidized services will generate an additional $145,000 in revenue in 2020 and offset the increase needed to the property tax levy to maintain existing services by 0.13 per cent.
Other increases include:
- The city's cemetery, a full-cost recovery service, will see yearly across-the-board three per cent increases.
- Off-street-parking, another service in which the City works to recover the full cost from the user, will go up by two per cent per year.
- Households and businesses on non-metered water and sewer accounts will see a four-per-cent increase. For a household, the bill will be $995.78, up $37.90.
Similar to what is in place for those on metered water, those on metered sewer accounts will pay a flat fee tied to the size of the pipe to cover the capital cost of the service and a charge per gallon to cover the operating cost. For metered households and businesses in a 19 mm pipe, that would have meant an almost 50-per-cent increase to their bills for water and sewer in 2020, but council agreed to spread the rise over two years to soften the blow. They will be paying $685.84 in 2020, rising to $818.67 in 2021.
There are 1,307 residential metered accounts and 639 commercial metered accounts in the city. Non-metered accounts total about 22,000.
