Valemount Community Forest predicts over $600K profit for 2025

By Abigail Popple, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, RMG

The Valemount Community Forest will likely make somewhere between $600K – $800K in profit over the next year, according to a presentation that general manager Kalina Velez gave to Council during its February 25th meeting.

After being introduced by community forest president Ainslie Jackman, Velez gave an overview of the community forest’s 2024 finances, as well as a projection of revenue and costs for the next year.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen in 2025 with the tariffs,” Velez said. “But, if we keep going the way we were going in the past, then we should be in pretty much the same situation as in 2024.”

Last year, the community forest generated over $9M in revenue, Velez said. The vast majority of the revenue came from log sales, and $11K came from other sources, she said.

According to the presentation, the community forest spent about $7.8M on operational costs last year. These costs include hiring logging contractors  – which made up about $5.2M of the operational costs – as well as the cost of maintaining roads and silviculture, which made up $926K and $528K, respectively. Other costs included hauling material to other sites, 

The cost of maintaining roads may increase in the future, Velez said. The community forest will use roads on steeper terrain as it accesses land higher in the mountains, which will make them more challenging to maintain, she said.

Additionally, the community forest spent $308,078 on payroll last year, along with nearly $250K on administrative fees, according to the presentation. These costs, along with funding grants, giving donations, the board’s discretionary funds, and other miscellaneous costs, total roughly $605K.

Taking these expenses into account, the Valemount Community Forest made a net profit of about $654K.

According to the presentation, the organization predicts it will make about $9M in revenue in 2025. Operational costs may increase, Velez said, but the current projections estimate that they will total about $7.6M.

There is a chance that the community forest will make a higher profit than the predicted $654,473 next year, Velez added.

“This number actually may be a little bit higher because right now we’re pre-developing a lot more road,” she said. “I don’t want to make promises, but we might be looking at closer to $800K in total net income.”

However, that prediction may change based on factors such as wildfires, which may make it difficult to harvest in the summer, Velez said. Still, she said the organization should generate these estimated profits next year.

After Velez finished her presentation, Councillor Pete Pearson asked to review the slide with the community forest’s total revenue and net income for 2024. Velez showed the slide again, which featured a pie chart of the total revenue, total expenses, and net profit.

With no further discussion, Council moved to receive the delegation.