The cost of everything from parking your car to swimming in the local pool is about to increase as municipalities grapple with introduction of the harmonized sales tax in July.

"It's something that municipalities are quite nervous about and working hard to investigate all of the impacts," Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin said.

"It's certainly something that I'm very much concerned about, because, in the past, municipalities have not paid the PST. Now that it's been harmonized with the GST there are extra costs that we're faced with absorbing within our own structure or else we have to pass it on to the consumer," Fortin said.

"Neither of those are very palatable."

Fortin said B.C. municipalities have been scrambling to get a sense of the impact of the new tax --trying to nail down what is exempt and what is not and to figure out how to most seamlessly work an additional seven per cent tax into fee structures.

Without having seen any legislation yet, it's difficult to pinpoint all the changes, says Saanich director of finance Paul Murray.

Essentially, any service that was previously subject to the five per cent GST is now subject to the 12 per cent harmonized sales tax.

Municipalities will be insulated from the new tax in their purchasing, but consumers buying services -- such as pool time or rink rentals -- will have to pay the tax, Murray said.

"Recreation fees are HST-able as of July 1. Recreation fees currently are GST-able, so if you paid for $100 swim lessons, right now, you pay five dollars in GST because it's five per cent. As of July 1, you'll pay 12 per cent, so it's twelve dollars, and you'll see a seven per cent tax increase to the province for that," Murray said.

"We're assuming that the [age] 14 years and under won't be [subject to GST], just like they're not now," Murray said.

The looming HST was a factor in Saanich limiting its projected increase in recreation fees this year to two per cent.

"That was trying to maintain a bit of a balance between needing some sort of a fee increase like we historically do every year but trying to keep it as low as possible, recognizing that there's going to be another hit in July," Murray said.

"It [the HST] is not something we can offset, but we trimmed budgets as much as we could to keep it down to two per cent. In previous years, they've run three, four or five per cent," he said.

While parking fines will be exempt from the new tax, parking fees will not. Victoria city staff are working on how to best integrate the new tax into parking rates, said Victor Van den Boomen, Victoria's manager of parking services.

Like municipal recreation fees, parking is currently subject to GST, which is built into the parking rate.

"It becomes a little more of a challenge for us in dealing with our on-street parking and our parkade rates because we want to try to avoid the penny application," Van den Boomen said.

One option is to leave parking rates in parkades at $1 for the first hour and then instead of jumping to $2 for the second hour, increasing it to $2.25.

"So we're saying 12 and 12, we'll round it up to 25 cents, because we're not capable of issuing change at our automated systems or on-street meters," Van den Boomen said.

With the on-street parking system, the city will look at adjusting how much time 25 cents will buy.

"Right now it's 25 cents for 7 1/2 minutes. So, do we make it $2.25 for 63 minutes? Or do we make it 25 cents for six minutes? We're wanting to look at what other jurisdictions in B.C. are doing," he said.

A report on parking-rate options will be going to city council for a decision prior to July.

Parking represents big money for the city, pulling in more than $15 million in gross revenues a year.

Fortin said there's no way the city can absorb the tax increase and has no choice but to pass it on to the consumer.

"The downtown parking, besides regulating cars coming and going, helps contribute to our overall operations -- street cleaning, policing, hanging baskets and the grants we give to arts. So, it's certainly not something we can absorb without having an impact, and it certainly feels like a heavy case of downloading," Fortin said.

Both Fortin and Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard hope the new tax won't make recreation unaffordable for some.

"I hope it's not going to affect peoples' choices in terms of being active and healthy," Leonard said.

"In terms of their total household budget, yeah, I think it's going to affect people. I think recreation is just a part of it but I don't know what someone on a tight household budget is going to make those choices around."