Jobs, Growth & Your Tax Bill

Homeowners currently carry more than two-thirds of Nanaimo's property taxes. Every new business on the roll is a little bit less on everyone else's bill. The council's job is to make it easy to invest here and hard to lose the employment land we already have.

Main points

• Grow the business tax base so homeowners pay less. Industrial properties pay more than three times as much per dollar of value, but there are not enough of them.
• Fix the permitting mess. Let staff approve routine applications, stop requiring a second design review on land already zoned industrial, and review applications in parallel instead of in series.
• Find more industrial and commercial land, fast. Nanaimo is on track to run out of industrial land within the next fifteen years.
• Don't let housing wipe out the business tax base. New provincial rules make it easier to convert commercial and light industrial land to housing. Hitting housing targets and protecting employment land both require intention, not luck.
• Extend the downtown tax break for mixed-use buildings that include non-market housing. Kamloops gives ten years; Nanaimo gives five. Match Kamloops, but only for buildings that include affordable housing.
• Create targeted tax breaks to attract good employers in advanced manufacturing, technology, and marine industry.
• Start switching the City fleet to electric. A fiscal decision first: protection from the next oil price shock.
• Keep the rail spur study moving. A freight connection between Wellcox Yard and Duke Point could eventually give local businesses a cheaper way to move goods off the Island.

Policy detail

Expanded policy detail for this pillar is forthcoming. Check back for a fuller discussion of the permitting reforms, the industrial land inventory, and the fiscal case for fleet electrification.