As I understand Burnaby's
current Capital Plan, the whole of the current five year program (including the new RCMP Facility Redevelopment, Confederation Park Community Centre, Cameron Recreation Centre, Pool and Library) is already funded. In 2024 just over half the expenditure of $365m is from the Community Benefit Bonus Reserve, and just under half from other sources, including taxes.
Burnaby has already collected the money they're planning to spend, so it's come from developments over the past 20 or 30 years (in a period when Burnaby saved almost everything it received, and didn't spend much on new facilities, or anything on affordable housing for example).
The money can't be spent on operations - only on capital items, so the current Council are committed to 'nice things' - ($2.5bn worth over the next 5 years) - rather than sitting counting the money.
At the end of 2023 Burnaby was sitting on assets of $5.7bn, up $241m from 2022. The City’s reserve funds are $2,16bn, 10% operating reserves (for things like snow removal) and 90% of them for capital projects, both new and renewal. They would have been even higher, but CACs only paid "$62.2 million compared to both budget and prior years (2022 - $250.7 million)". Nevertheless, in 2022 Burnaby’s reserves were the largest in the province by more than $1 billion.
We know some development projects that will pay CACs are paused, and unless the entire market for new housing stays depressed for a long time, the CACs associated with the anticipated, but stalled, projects will show up in future.
The new provincial legislation may limit the amount Burnaby can collect from CACs in future, but they should have less need to renew many of their facilities as several Community Centres are being upgraded significantly. There's going to be discussion about whether Burnaby should count on CACs as much going forward, and whether taxes will have to climb, or future capital projects (like the New City Hall, which isn't in the 2024-28 plan) reduced in scope, but the current projects aren't impacted by future revenue from development.
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