CLIMATE – Open letter collects signatures urging council to keep levy

As City council heads into the final stages of budget season, a move to re-consider climate action funding at Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting has quickly generated a signature campaign urging council to leave it alone.

At the request of council, staff will present some options for reducing the projected 10.8 per cent tax increase for 2024. One of them is to cut the climate action levy from 0.35 per cent to 0.175 per cent for one year, or to defer it entirely for a year.

“This region’s vulnerability to climate-related harm (fire, flood, and freeze-thaw cycles) to infrastructure and tourism assets (let alone the human cost, given the number of people experiencing homelessness) should make it clear that this is not the time to be backing off on investing in climate action,” said Dr. Nancy Flood, president of the Kamloops Naturalist Club.

The reason the City adopted the funding formula, called the Climate Action Levy, in 2021 was to provide reliable, long-term funding that grows over time, says a news release from those organizing the letter of concern.

“It was designed to build up the reserves required to tackle necessary, but expensive, infrastructure projects — and allow the City to leverage those dollars to access grant funding available for climate action from higher levels of government.”

The climate action levy contributes to priority actions focused on both mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Gisela Ruckert, an organizer with Transition Kamloops, which is spearheading the open letter to Council, said, “We need both a fluid funding source for the short-term (for secure bike parking, climate action grants, municipal incentives and rebates for home energy efficiency retrofits, EV readiness, etc.), and the larger, reliable funding to plan major projects like improving the community’s active transportation network and decarbonizing civic facilities.”

Several local organizations, including Physicians for a Healthy Environment, Kamloops Moms for Clean Air, Kamloops Naturalist Club, the Youth of Kamloops Climate Action Network, the Kamloops Cycling Coalition, the Kamloops Bike Riders Association, the TRU Geography Society and more than 200 individual Kamloopsians had signed the letter by noon today.

“We didn’t anticipate that there would be an appetite on Council to revisit the climate action funding formula, given that our City won so much positive recognition for it and it’s being used as a model by other communities,” said Ruckert.

“So we’ve had only a day or so to do anything about it, and we are amazed at the response we’ve seen to our invitation to sign the open letter. Clearly, this news hit a nerve.”