The story told by the small pile of numbers released by the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) covering the second quarter of 2024 is a simple one: not much changed compared to Q1.
Speaking to the report at the Sept. 24 council meeting, the RMOW’s chief financial officer, Carlee Price, said exactly that.
“I have very few comments today because most of what has gone on in the second quarter of 2024 very closely resembles what's gone on in the quarters immediately before that,” she said.
As a refresher, in the first-quarter financial report, Price noted tourism was showing early signs of slowing, but the local economy was relatively strong.
Fast forward three months to now: “We are seeing that tourist-supported revenues are still slowing, we are seeing that resident-supported revenues—things like Meadow Park Sports Centre and transit fares—are continuing to grow,” Price said.
Building-department revenues were significantly down in the quarter, too—something Price said was also in line with trends, in that there was a shift away from whole-home construction to renovations, while the municipality’s operating expenditures were tracking along with the budget.
On that, Price said project delivery for 2024 was achieving a rate of 25.4 per cent (the amount spent versus the amount budgeted for projects), which she said was “well above where we traditionally are at this point of mid year.”
Some of those projects include big-ticket items such as new fire trucks, upgrades to municipal hall, expansion at the transfer station and the opening of Rainbow Park.
The RMOW’s investment portfolio also warranted some words given the Bank of Canada recently cut rates.
“The future outlook for the direction and magnitude of rate changes has worsened, meaning that additional cuts are to be expected, and those cuts will be deeper than what was anticipated a year ago,” said Price.
“Because of this, we can expect the investment income coming off our portfolio to be lower in the second half of 2024 than it was in the second half of 2023, and also to affect our interest income in the coming fiscal year.”
The full run of hard numbers can be read on the RMOW website.
During questions, Councillor Cathy Jewett noted the tourism numbers and revenues through the MRDT—or the hotel tax—and asked whether any slowdown could be compensated for in upcoming financial reports.
“We had a fairly robust summer … would you anticipate we would be able to make up the shortfall with a successful summer?” she asked.
Price said those numbers weren’t yet in front of them, given July and August are critical for the MRDT (and therefore covered by the third-quarter report), but through data shared by Tourism Whistler, they did have an idea about room-night bookings.
“It doesn’t look terrifically encouraging, but it’s certainly not devastating either,” she said.
Commenting on the report, Coun. Arthur De Jong said Whistler was lucky.
“We don’t know where it’s going to land yet, but I think we’re so lucky with whatever we get, and that we didn’t get smoked out given where we were in spring, so we’ve had a lucky summer," he said.
“I’ll project some optimism—I’m not sure about MRDT, but all weather forecasts are very positive for this winter,” he added.
"We used to say in the ski business that a good snow year will cheer a recession if you’re in one … not that we are in one, but I’m optimistic we’ll have a good winter this year, and hopefully that’s reflected in further revenues.”
