Monthly Update - November 2025

November updates

Author

Samantha Agtarap
December 07, 2025

Hi there,

November has wrapped up, and we’re fully into the holiday season, and the city kicked it off with Cheer at the Pier. It was another busy month - both at council and in my work life. I attended Housing Central, Pembina Institute workshop and BERM 2.0 (ZEIC). Council also continued budget deliberations. These will carry into the new year, as we are still waiting on several key pieces of information before making a final decision early.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing more about taxation and the broader pressures driving the budget upwards – pressures that ultimately land on property owners. I’m a taxpayer too, and I know how challenging this current economic climate is for many people. One core issue is that cities rely on property taxation for most of their revenue. In some cases, the Province limits cities’ ability to independently set the mill rate (see Port taxes and a share of the gaming revenue), pushing the burden to residents and small business owners.

Coquitlam recently tallied the cost of Provincial government downloading to the city, estimating that over the past four years, that has amounted to $37.6 million (read the Freshet news story here). This expectation that cities absorb these costs puts a significant strain on municipal budgets, and, ultimately the people and businesses in our communities.

In this newsletter:

Highlights of the month

As usual, I’ve highlighted a few items below that are especially important or interesting. For a full picture, you can find links to Council meetings at the bottom of this newsletter.

Events I attended (not including regularly scheduled council meetings):

  • November 7: FCM Inclusive Climate Action in Tunisian Municipalities (Port Moody team meeting)

  • November 11: Remembrance Day ceremony

  • November 16-17: Housing Central Conference

  • November 25: Pembina Summit on clean energy

  • November 27: FCM Inclusive Climate Action in Tunisian Municipalities (project planning)

  • November 28: Medal of Good Citizenship Ceremony for Chloe Goodison

November photos – a few photos from this month.

Eagle at Noon’s Creek

Fall at City Hall

Chloe Goodison, accepting her award

My cat, attending a meeting

Port taxes and a share of gaming revenue

At the November 12 regular meeting, during verbal reports, I served a NOM titled: Defining the Financial Impact of Legislative Tax Rate Caps on Taxpayers, which we discussed on November 18 at the Finance Committee:

THAT staff be directed to estimate the revenue that the City is foregoing due to federal and provincial legislation capping or otherwise limiting the ability of the City to independently levy taxes.

Prior to that meeting, I sent an amendment to my colleagues that read:

And that staff include in the review a summary of all properties that are not being taxed at highest and best use, to provide a complete review of property taxation and identify under-taxed parcels.

And that pending the results of the analysis, staff be directed to prepare an invoice to be delivered to the Provincial and Federal governments for their share of port taxes,

And that staff send a letter to the province requesting that they issue the city a casino license, given that gaming revenue is not equitably shared.

Council voted in favour of everything except the last clause. I wrote more about that on social media, which I’ve copied below. Read on Facebook here or read on below.

A casino in Port Moody? Wait, what?

If you didn’t watch the entire discussion on Finance Agenda Item 4.6 last night — including two Zoom crashes — you might assume that I, and Mayor Lahti, who understood the point I was making, want Port Moody to get a casino. That’s not the whole story.

I brought the motion as a cheeky way to make a stronger point to the Province about the inequities in gaming revenue distribution. And if the Province won’t fix those inequities, then give us the option to host our own gaming facility.

I want you to see how uneven the revenue-generating landscape is for municipalities. If you don’t have a casino, you get zero dollars from gaming revenue, even though all of our residents contribute.

I’m frustrated because Port Moody residents carry the costs of provincial and federal government decisions. We host Burrard Thermal, a hospital and a port – all important regional and provincial assets, but our community pays for them through property taxes.

These properties pay reduced property tax rates (or none at all, in the case of the hospital), yet still use our resources. Residents and other local businesses cover the shortfall.

Limited revenue sources + reduced revenue from major properties = heavier burden on residents and local businesses.

So, yes, I’m mad! Our community continues to subsidize provincial and federal policy choices through property taxes.

I brought the motion to apply for a casino license to spotlight this inequity. It is absurd to think we would get a casino license – we’ll get one when pigs fly. I just want the province to know that we are not letting this go. And I refuse to be quiet about it.

I’ll keep raising this issue – at the council table, with councillors across BC, with senior levels of government – every chance I get. And I need your help too: contact your MLA and MPs and ask them to fix the inequities in municipal revenue sources, including reforming gaming revenue sharing, port property taxation, sharing cannabis taxes, and property taxation in general. Port Moody can’t keep bearing these costs alone.

(And if, by some wild turn of events, pigs do fly, and the Province grants our request, I would expect the city to ask for public input. But, I wasn’t willing to spend staff time or community time on a hypothetical scenario.) [end]

Just to be clear – because my words have been misunderstood and misconstrued – I am not advocating for a casino or a share of casino revenue. The current system is inherently unfair, and the Province needs to consider sharing a tiny portion of the $1B+ they receive from gaming revenue with the 129 municipalities that do not have access to this revenue source, to which all our residents contribute.

City Manager Update

Every few weeks, the City Manager sends a summary out to staff about Council activities. You may see these shared by other members of council on social media. I have published it all in a separate post as these detailed updates were making this monthly update a bit lengthy. This is verbatim; I have not changed any words, only formatted for readability and shared with permission. You can find November’s update here: https://sam4pomo.beehiiv.com/p/city-manager-update-november-2025

Other useful things

  • Do you need a doctor? Register at the Health Connect Registry. The ministry uses this to measure need in a region. Signing up helps to demonstrate that primary care physicians are needed in specific areas.

  • Have you signed up for the Port Moody Events Newsletter? If not, email [email protected]. Read it below.

Port Moody Events Newsletter November_December 2025.pdf2.89 MB • PDF File