Don't Sweat the Big Stuff

The Town of Qualicum Beach held a Committee of the Whole Meeting on January 14, 2026. The meeting was a public engagement session for the 2026 Asset Management and Capital Plan and for the 2026-2030 proposed Capital Budget. This was the public's invitation to participate in the preparation of the upcoming budget. The "ad" for this meeting was on the Town's website: "Join us for Financial Planning and provide your input". Not exactly exciting stuff which may explain the fact that there were less than 10 members of the public in the audience.

Generally, agendas for council meetings are posted a number of days in advance of the meeting and include an information package with materials relevant to the meeting. This provides the public with an opportunity to review the materials prior to the meeting and, in the case of a committee of the whole meeting where the public has an opportunity to speak, and ask questions of Council. As you would expect, the agenda package for a meeting on the budget would be dozens or possibly hundreds of pages in length. Not so for the January 14 meeting. The agenda was one page that merely stated that there was to be a power point presentation from the Director of Finance with supplementary material to be distributed at the meeting. This eliminated any chance of reviewing the budget materials and formulating questions to council prior to the meeting.

At the meeting, the "supplementary materials" consisted of photocopies of the 71 power point slides being presented by the Director of Finance. Nothing further was provided. Why these could not have been provided prior to the meeting is a good question.

One of the first comments made by the Director of Finance was that the Town's reserve balances are not sufficient to support the replacement of aging infrastructure. This statement was repeated in various forms a number of times during his presentation as well as written out on the power point slides (deferral of replacement beyond service life; reserve balances are modest and not sufficient; current funding does not support the required annual spend). While this caused me considerable concern, it did not appear to attract the attention of the members of council. After the presentation, Council's questions to the Director were more about specifics of particular Town projects (for example, can there be a priority left turn light at the Fern and Memorial intersection? Can the resurfacing of the Civic Centre floor and the repainting of the siding at TOSH be deferred?) while completely ignoring the elephant in the room, namely, that there is not enough money in the reserves to replace aging and failing assets. The question of these deficiencies was only raised by Councillor Young very near the end of the council question period. More on that later.

A number of the slides in the power point presentation indicated that the sale of Eaglecrest Golf Course lands will be the source of funding for numerous projects. This will be good if, in fact, it reduces the burden on taxpayers. I reviewed the power point slides and calculated that over $15.5 million is expected from these sales. My calculations may not be correct as it was difficult to determine from the descriptions provided in the commentary if there was any duplication. Also, one project in particular (Eaglecrest Traffic Study at $120,000 and Traffic Solution at $5.5 million is described as being funded by land sales and grant dependent with no further explanation as to how much is grant funding and how much is coming from land sales. I suspect that this project is the often talked about roundabout. If so, it will be interesting to see if the $5.5 million is enough money to complete the project. This may not be a concern for the current council as the $5.5 million is set to be spent in 2027 during the term of the next council.

Speaking of grants, a number of the Town's projects are grant dependent. There was a discussion about the fact that not all of the grants will provide 100% funding for a project, with the balance coming from other Town resources. Little was said about the chances of receiving grant funding given the mounting debts of senior governments.

One slide presented at the meeting dealt with repairs to Town owned buildings, primarily roof repairs. I did not pay much attention to the slide at the time, possibly because there was little discussion about it and do not know the condition of these roofs. However, the slide states that for a number of the buildings "replacement [has been] deferred beyond useful service [with] risks of unanticipated emergency repairs" with the roof replacements for various buildings being deferred to 2027 (TOSH), 2028 (Civic Centre phase 2) and 2029 (Leigh House, Airport Hanger, Airport Terminal). The Train Station and Town Hall are also listed as replacement deferred beyond useful service life, however, replacements appear to set for sometime after 2030.

Most of Council's discussion at the meeting focused on specific details of particular, at least in my mind, minor projects with little discussion about the funding gap for infrastructure replacement or how to solve it. As mentioned earlier, Councillor Young asked staff what could be done. The "solution" provided by the Director of Finance was an explanation that the financial plan included a 1.3% tax increase each year for the next 14 years to narrow the gap. There was no suggestion from the Director that Council look at other alternatives such as cutting services, reducing spending on non-essential items, reducing the property tax exemptions provided to non-profits or increasing user fees. It actually took a member of the public to suggest these things to Council during the public engagement session. Hopefully, Council were listening.

This meeting was about capital expenditures. The next meeting will be on January 28, 2026 and will address the operating expenses. Plan to attend as it appears that this will be the last opportunity for public participation.

James Noel

January 15, 2026

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