Revolt at the ballot box

Dear editor: Re: West Kelowna taxes could increase to 5 to 8 per cent (Courier, June 13).

At this week’s West Kelowna council meeting, chief administrative officer Jim Zaffino, looking for revenue sources, suggested a franchise fee, which is basically a levy on residential energy supply systems (in this case a tax on the gas and/or electrical bills) processed by the utility companies with the fee going to the city as revenue.

Council voted it down, but the reason the CAO brought it up is an anticipated shortage of funds to pay for the planned projects over the next several years.

Zaffino advised council the city will have a shortfall of income to meet all the budgeted projects, largely due to, in his opinion, the proposed speculation tax and the discontinuation of the Goats Peak development.

In this writer’s opinion, the real reason is the 24 per cent downturn in the real estate market that will lessen development and lessen the developer cost contributions the city has been spending like water.

Zaffino also stated that there are not enough reserves to cover the downturn shortfalls. At the meeting, councillors spoke of taxes possibly increasing from five per cent to as high as nine per cent. The bottom line is:

• The city failed to listen to citizens who told them during the city hall referendum to build up the reserves. Council even reduced the 2018 tax rates to below per cent (a discount of around $100,000-plus) instead of putting these funds into the reserves. At the time, the city already knew there was a shortfall in reserves.

• Citizens told the city not to proceed with Phase 2 of the wine trail until the economy changed to allow for better bids. It was also suggested the water main be completed with minimal improvements to the road surface but, the city went ahead with almost $9 million of spending on 1.3 kilometres of roadway.

• Citizens told the city not to proceed with the $3.1-million development of a soccer dome, plus the cost of moving the water main under the land. Council said the water main portion of the cost is coming out of the water utility reserve budget and therefore is not part of the soccer budget. In reality, all of these budget funds come out of one pocket — the taxpayers. How much is this going to eventually cost us?

• The city is continuing to purchase more land for their proposed city hall (probably a minimum of over $1 million for an appropriate size piece of land that can accommodate the building and parking requirements). The city refuses to use city-owned land available at Bartley and Stevens and is intending on spending $5 million for a works yard building. The city is also putting $700,000 per year (for an estimated 10-12 years) into a special reserve to build a city hall. Why are we spending more money that we do not have for land?

City council’s choices are spend taxpayers’ money wisely or abuse the taxpayer with higher property taxes and more taxes with different names.

Taxpayers’ choices are stay quiet and pay up or a revolt at the ballot box.

Richard McLeod West Kelowna