Too much cost downloading

Dear editor: With the recent federal grants locally for infrastructure — solar panels for Summerland; arena expansion for Penticton; Okanagan sewer upgrades — taxpayers should take a look how provincial and federal governments have found a new cash cow: local governments.

Increasing burdens are being placed on local government with no compensatory means of controlling the costs or raising revenues to pay for these services. Downloading of costs for services had become a major problem with a serious multi-billion dollar impact on local government.

The Columbia Institute has done a study on how government changes can affect local government in various ways:

• Direct off-loading of federal or provincial programs and/or responsibilities without adequate funding or revenue tools;

• Regulatory changes that require spending by municipalities.

• Enforcement of federal and provincial regulations;

• Cancellation of programs and services that are needed or expected by the public;

• Reduction or cancellation of senior government transfers or program funding;

• Programs that are paid for municipally, but where municipalities have little control over costs.

• Grant-based-or “one-time only” funding of downloaded or new programs encouraged by senior governments;

• Under-investment by senior governments in infrastructure maintenance, renewal and replacement; and

• Failure to adequate address issues or problems that should fall under provincial of federal jurisdiction

Between February and May 2014 the Columbia Institute collected 133 survey responses from councillors, mayors and regional district directors representing more than half of BC municipalities.

Response to the survey indicated that 83.6 per cent considered downloading a problem; 12.9 per cent said it was a minor problem; 0.9 per cent said it wasn’t a problem; 2.6 per cent didn’t know.

Top five concerns: environment and related infrastructure; policing and related costs; health and social services; solid and liquid waste management; and roads and highways

Comments from respondents indicated the problems originated with the initiation of programs with only grants or short-term funding.

Feel-good projects with no provision for money to maintain them once completed.

This has had a ripple effect on local government. The B.C. government has shed thousands of employees between 2001 and 2011 while the number of local government employees increased by about 30 percent.

At the same time that local government responsibilities increased federal and provincial transfers sharply decreased. The difference between where we stood in 1995 and 2008 is about a $4-billion in lost transfers to B.C. local governments. Elvena Slump Penticton