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It would take a lot of resourceful Girl Guides, selling a lot of chocolate, vanilla and mint cookies to pay this tax bill.

At midday today, the District of Sechelt will vote on a bylaw that could force a waterfront Girl Guides camp to pay taxes on half of its picturesque oceanfront property, where generations of girls have gathered since the camp was founded in 1927.

If the bylaw goes ahead, Camp Olave could face a tax bill of nearly $140,000 in 2010 and similar levies in years to come. That's more than 100,000 boxes of Girl Guide cookies, which net about $1.25 from each $4 carton; in a typical year, Vancouver-area Guides sell about 60,000 boxes. In other words, cookie sales alone won't save the day. And the potential bill could not only spell the end of Camp Olave but has troubling implications for other non-profits that rely on tax exemptions to stay afloat, camp supporters say.

"The bottom line is that if we can't find an avenue to be completely tax-exempt, then we have to sell the property," said Elaine Lake, chairwoman of the camp's management committee.

"If we lose this, that opens the door for all non-profits to be taxed."

A "Save Camp Olave" Facebook group has nearly 700 members, and other camping and non-profit groups are closely watching the decision.

The proposed changes "came as quite a surprise to all of us," said Alamin Pirani, executive director of Scouts Canada, British Columbia and Yukon council. E-mails and phone calls about the tax status of scout camps buzzing since the proposed changes for Camp Olave were announced. To date, Scouts Canada has not learned of any camps it owns that face the same potential tax hit.

"But we need to be vigilant to make sure the permissive tax exemptions continue," Mr. Pirani said. "We don't sell goods to make money. We provide a service, and we are always trying to keep our costs down."

Camp Olave's financial worries come when camps are already reeling from the loss of government grants and pinched revenues as cash-strapped school boards cut back on school-sponsored camping expeditions, said Hartley Banack, president of the B.C. Camping Association.

"It really seems to be the case that the provincial government has decided," Mr. Banack said, "and it's being adopted by local governments, that outdoor education doesn't matter."

B.C. municipalities control local taxation, and the mayor of the council that came up with the plan to slash Camp Olave's tax exemption - and has since been bombarded with telephone calls and e-mails protesting the move - says the proposal is driven by simple economics, not spite.

"We're not this big, bad district that some people are trying to portray us as," said Sechelt Mayor Darren Inkster.

According to a staff report, Sechelt provides tax exemptions equivalent to 4.1 per cent of its 2008 tax revenues, well above the 1- and 2-per-cent levels reported by other small B.C. municipalities. The same report says Sechelt has foregone an estimated $2-million in property tax from Camp Olave over the past 12 years.

In decades past, the site didn't account for much in the way of potential foregone taxes. But as the land value climbed, to its current assessed value of $26-million, so did the foregone tax hit. According to a council staff report, the requested 2010 tax exemption for Camp Olave is about $265,000 - or more than half of the $602,000 worth of tax exemption requests made to the district.

Under the current proposal, the district would grant the Girl Guides a tax exemption on the waterfront section of the 140-acre Camp Olave property - named after guiding patron Lady Olave Baden-Powell. The Girl Guides would be on the hook for the remainder.

Local governments have long wrestled with the question of how much of a tax break to give churches and other non-profit groups. Penticton recently considered a bylaw that would have eliminated some tax exemptions for non-profit groups, including churches, but backed down after a public outcry about the potential impact on community services.

"We heard from people point-blank that because the economy is tough, that it shouldn't go ahead," Penticton Mayor Dan Ashton said. "And council listened and backed away from it."

Camp Olave has an operating budget of about $250,000 a year, with all of that except a $5,000 lifeguards' grant coming from fees paid by Lower Mainland Girl Guides, its operators say.