Kamloops mayor has a budget cut wish list he won’t bring to council

Kamloops city council is in the final stages of budget talks and the mayor has ideas he wants on the table.

Speaking with iNFOnews.ca this week, Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson targeted wages for city management, legal fees and contracting costs among his proposed cuts.

That’s after council cut an initial 10.8 per cent tax increase nearly in half, poised to officially confirm the 5.7% increase in the coming weeks. That’s not enough for Hamer-Jackson.

“It all adds up, everything you do,” the mayor said.

How and when he’d bring his suggestions to council isn’t clear.

“I think that’ll have to be you that does it,” he said when how he’ll raise it with colleagues.

Meanwhile, city council cuts included deferring new hires for Kamloops RCMP and the fire department, along with billing the province for maintenance at the closed Stuart Wood School.

Among his own suggestions, Hamer-Jackson said city hall management should take “voluntary” wage cuts.

Management positions make up 14% of the roughly 900 people employed by the city. Wage cuts aren’t something considered by council so far, but they did vote on whether to freeze any raises over the next year during a recent in-camera meeting.

Hamer-Jackson hasn’t attended those closed-door meetings in months, but the proposal could have saved an estimated $650,000 in the year. Council voted against the raise freeze.

“We’re in tough times. We’ve got a lot of people having a tough time paying their taxes and everything else,” the mayor said.

He also suggested some jobs city hall contracts out should be done by in-house union employees instead, like painting over graffiti or construction, but it’s not clear whether the city has enough staff to take on that work.

Another accounting line in Hamer-Jackson’s sights is city hall legal fees, which have grown substantially since he was elected in 2022.

City officials have pinned the blame largely on the mayor for the increase in those fees, last year attributing more than $1 million on his actions. In 2023, city hall legal fees doubled the previous year’s and kept climbing in 2024. What was spent in 2025 isn’t clear, but Hamer-Jackson said he has asked staff for the total.

More than a half-million dollars have been spent on code of conduct investigations alone since 2023, while Hamer-Jackson’s own lawsuits have also cost taxpayers. Although he has been the target of many of the costly conduct complaints, he blamed councillors who filed them for the cost to taxpayers, especially for the many that were abandoned.

While the current tax increase is projected to be 5.7% this year, Hamer-Jackson said his proposed cuts could take the total close to his goal of around 3%.

A single per cent increase in the city budget is around $1.6 million in tax funds, but Hamer-Jackson didn’t have projections to show his plan would cut more than $3 million from the budget.

“I haven’t dug into it, but if you cut down a million or two in contractors versus union employees. If you cut another million out of legal fees, trying to do whatever they’re doing in closed meetings — obviously they’re trying to get rid of me,” he said, then mentioned salary increases for management.

“I’m just trying to overturn every rock, and from what I understand the budget doesn’t have to be in until May.”