‘WE'RE NOT GOING BROKE’ — LAKE COUNTRY MAYOR

Diminished financial reserves are a consequence of meeting public demand for infrastructure improvements, Lake Country Mayor James Baker says.

The municipality’s total surplus and reserves on a per capita basis dropped from $1,600 in 2006 to $800 in 2014, newly released financial statements show.

“We’ve judiciously used a portion of the reserves to accomplish a lot of projects that were wanted in our community,” Baker said Wednesday.

Some particularly big-ticket items, he said, have included safety upgrades to Lodge Road, Bottom Wood Lake Road and other streets used by students walking to neighbourhood schools.

While surpluses and reserves have dropped to just 58 per cent of the provin- cial municipal average of $1,500 per capita, a brighter picture is found in the section of Lake Country’s 2014 annual report that deals with municipal debt.

The total long-term outstanding debt adjusted for inflation was $1,200 per capita in 2005, but that has trended downward since and has now fallen to $800 per capita. That is, however, still above the provincial municipal average of $678 per capita.

Other parts of the report show a yearover-year surge in developer cost charges — the fees collected from builders — as well as more money in transfers from other levels of government, and an overall rise in municipal revenue from $21 million in 2013 to $31 million last year.

“The District of Lake Country’s financial results were an improvement relative to 2013,” chief financial officer Rose Bronswyk Kassa writes in the report.

Baker, who has been mayor since 2005, has a more blunt assessment: “We’re not going broke, although I know some people were trying to make that argument during the railway referendum.”

When the town’s 13,000 residents were deciding earlier this spring whether Lake Country should help buy the abandoned Vernon-Kelowna railway corridor, critics said the municipality was in poor financial shape.

They particularly seized upon a comment by a town official that some paved roads may have to be returned to gravel is sufficient funds weren’t found to maintain them.

Voters overwhelmingly endorsed the railway purchase, voting 75 per cent in favour in the April 29 referendum.

Lake Country is the fastest-growing municipality in the province, according to BC Statistics, with a population increase of 5.6 per cent between 2013 and 2014.