Tax notices landed in mailboxes across BC last week. Mine included. And like most homeowners, I opened it, did a quick mental calculation, and moved on with my day. But I’m also a communications professional who works with local governments. So, I also read the accompanying newsletter, took a look at what a few other municipalities were putting out, and started thinking about the gap between what residents actually need to know and what they’re being told.
The gap is wider than it should be.
The comparison graphic problem
The most common communication tactic I see at budget time is the “cost comparison” graphic. You know the one. A coffee costs $2.50 a day. Your tax increase is only $X a year. Or, this municipality’s taxes are lower than the regional average. These graphics are everywhere, and I understand the instinct behind them. Communications teams are trying to put numbers in context, to make the abstract feel manageable.
The problem is that these comparisons don’t hold up. Property taxes are not a single comparable product. When you compare rates or average residential tax bills across municipalities, you are comparing wildly different things. Is the neighbouring city running its own water and sewer utility, or is that billed separately? Does the regional district cover some services your municipality doesn’t? What’s the size and composition of the tax base? A municipality with significant industrial or commercial assessment will have a very different rate structure than one that is almost entirely residential.
When a resident sees “we’re cheaper than the next town over,” they don’t ask those questions. They take the comparison at face value. Which means we’ve given them a feel-good number rather than an honest one. And when the feel-good number eventually runs into reality, trust erodes.
I totally get it—and I’ve done it. We just want to make it relatable even if it is a bit of a stretch.
What actually shapes a tax bill
There are three things that genuinely explain a property tax bill: the tax base, the service level, and how utilities are structured and funded.
The tax base matters enormously. A small municipality with a narrow residential base carries more of the cost per household than one with a healthy commercial and industrial mix. That’s not a failure of management. It’s a structural reality. Say it plainly.
Service levels are equally important. If your municipality operates a recreation centre, runs its own transit, maintains more lane kilometres of road than average, or provides services the regional district doesn’t cover elsewhere, those things cost money and they show up in the mill rate. Residents who use those services, or who value having them, deserve to understand that connection.
Utilities are often where the comparison breaks down completely. When one municipality bundles water and sewer into the tax bill and another invoices separately, the optics look completely different. Apples to apples? Rarely.
Asset storytelling isn’t just a budget tactic
One of the things I consistently recommend to clients is not to wait until budget season to talk about what infrastructure costs. The conversation goes much better when residents have been hearing all year about the water main replacement on the east side, the condition of the aging arena roof, or the fact that the municipality has been deferring road resurfacing for three years and can’t keep doing it.
Year-round asset storytelling builds the foundation for honest budget conversations. When residents see the infrastructure, they understand the cost. When the cost arrives without context, it feels arbitrary.
I know, assets can be boring. But we can do it. Sure they don’t know what a lift station is but if we tell them it is the thing that moves the poop and keeps it from overflowing into the river, I think they will get it.
This doesn’t have to be complicated. A photo of a crew repairing a water main with a caption that explains what it costs and how long it should last does real work. So does a plain-language update when a project comes in under budget or a grant comes through. You’re building a record of what it takes to run a community. That record makes budget season a continuation of an ongoing conversation rather than an annual defence of a number. Asset Management BC is a fabulous resource to help you communicate your assets.
Treat residents as informed adults
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to, both as a resident and as a communicator. The assumptions we make about what residents can or can’t handle shape the information we give them. If we assume they’ll panic at a large number, we soften the number. If we assume they’ll tune out complexity, we oversimplify to the point of misleading. If we assume they’re looking for ammunition against the municipality, we get defensive instead of transparent.
Those assumptions are often wrong, and acting on them is disrespectful.
Most residents are not budget analysts, but they are adults who manage their own finances, weigh competing priorities, and make decisions based on imperfect information every day. They can understand that infrastructure ages. They can understand that downloading from senior governments has real consequences at the local level. They can understand that a tax increase reflects a choice to maintain a service rather than cut it.
They may not like the increase. That’s fair. But understanding it is different from liking it. And a resident who understands is far more likely to maintain trust in the institution than one who feels managed. And as I keep saying, trust is the most important goal in our communications.
The goal of tax communication shouldn’t be to make the number feel smaller. It should be to make the decision-making visible.
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Five things you can do right now
1. Audit your comparison graphics. Before you publish a mill rate comparison or a cost-per-day breakdown, ask whether the municipalities you’re comparing to have the same utility structure, service scope, and tax base composition. If they don’t, the comparison is doing more harm than good.
2. Add context to your utility billing. If residents receive separate utility invoices, make sure your budget communications acknowledge the full cost of municipal services, not just what shows on the tax bill.
3. Start an infrastructure content calendar. Pick one asset per month and tell its story. Age, condition, replacement timeline, cost. Do it before budget season, not during.
4. Replace “here’s what it costs per coffee” with “here’s what we decided and why.” Residents can engage with rationale. They can’t engage with a latte analogy. Especially, when many of them get their coffee at home and don’t buy those darn “fancy elitist coffees”.
5. Read your tax notice communication as a resident, not as a staff member. Does it explain what drove the change? Does it connect the increase to something tangible? Or does it simply announce a number and ask for trust you haven’t earned yet this year?
Julie Rogers Consulting 
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