The Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) provided a budget update for the city of Rossland council at its meeting May 6.
The RDKB budget has more than doubled over the past decade, and reached an all time high of $94M in 2024.
The RDKB goes from Fruitvale to Big White, and property taxes from homeowners across the district will help cover about one-third of the costs, increasing from $19M to $30M over the same span.
“The way Regional District legislation works is that service we operate, we operate as an individual business,” said CAO Mark Andison. “We can’t transfer funds between services, so we have 72 discreet services we provide across the region.”
Rossland utilizes 13 of those services, six regional and seven sub-regional, and along with its partners in the East End are responsible for paying for their portion of accessed services, which include waste management, protective services, general government, development, parks and recreation, and transportation.
Environmental services like sewer, water, and waste and organics eat up 50 per cent of the RDKB Budget. Capital expenditures account for most of that, $44M, which includes $31M for the Columbia Pollution Control Centre (CPCC) or sewage treatment plant, which will see an upgrade from primary to secondary treatment.
“The budget increased significantly more, and it’s largely due to the success we have had in getting grants,” said Andison. “The bid one is a project that we are hoping to break ground on later this year, and that is the Colombia Pollution Control Centre upgrade.”
The RDKB budget has hovered over $90M for the past three years, indicating several initiatives that are in the works or have been completed.
RDKB finished work on the McKelvey Creek Landfill in September 2023 at a cost of $3.8M, and launched a major project, the green bin/garbage collection program in October.
In 2023, the RDKB Climate Action Plan implemented the Low Carbon Resilient Retrofit program, the BC Building Code Energy Step Code Mandate, received funding for the electric light duty truck pilot, updated fleet replacement policy, and pursue funding for energy efficiency projects.
In 2024, the plan is to continue those initiatives, create a climate lens assessment toolkit, and break ground on the CPCC.