EDITORIAL – Stop complaining about the tax hike; the days of 2% are over
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
I CAN’T WAIT to see what City Hall staff comes up with in the way of ideas for reducing the projected 10.81 per cent tax increase for 2024.
City council shuffled the issue off to staff, asking for options.
One of the usual targets is “inefficiencies.” Fact is, though, that municipal budgets are always created with efficiencies in mind. Not easy to find more of them at this point.
The real options come in the form of services. Public opinion surveys consistently show that Kamloops taxpayers don’t want service cuts and are willing to accept reasonable tax increases to maintain what they’ve got.
Question is, what’s reasonable? A tax increase of close to 11 per cent doesn’t fit into that category.
The options council is asking for might not be palatable. Things like cutting recreational programs, reducing road maintenance, deferring important capital projects, holding off on hiring for the fire and police departments, maybe eliminating the upkeep of some parks.
In the meantime, some City councillors have decided to blame their budget problem on councils of the past. To some degree, they have a point. I’ve criticized the two-percent solution for the past 20 years because limiting tax increases to that amount has been more of a political decision than a logical one.
Keeping budgets too low can catch up with governments but there’s more to it than that. When City staff presented the 10.81 scenario to council, they explained that a big part of the increase comes from wage boosts for firefighters, RCMP and CUPE employees, and inflationary prices for supplies. No options there.
Be thankful you don’t live in Osoyoos, where the prospect of a 39.3 per cent tax increase has resulted in threats against the mayor and council. They, too, blame it on their predecessors.
The best that can be expected is that the increase here will be reduced by a per cent or two when the budget is finalized.
I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.
Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Last year was supposed to be a 6.9% increase, pretty high already. My increase was 15%. I never did get a satisfactory answer on that. Other posters here have made excellent points. It is not this City’s job/mandate to socially engineer a Utopian society reflective of the latest trends coming out of the coolest urban planning institutes. I don’t need the expensive and trendy fluff. I will be satisfied with solid and well-maintained infrastructure, good traffic flow, and common-sense urban planning and zoning by-laws. I also support construction of a first-class Performing Arts Centre as part of a well-rounded City that is an attractive place to live.
The outrageous spending by the federal government and 31% increase in the size of the federal service in the past 8 years should be a warning, not a goal.
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It’s an outrage that Council comes to us with cap in hand, demanding double digit increases to taxes in a single year, when the City and Council have mismanaged a number of large dollar value situations, in addition to the tomfoolery going on with the legal slush fund for a particular Council person who couldn’t keep the pie hole shut.
Council needs to look in the mirror, straighten up their shop immediately and climb mountains to bring forward a rwsoaable tax increase.
It really should be locked to inflation or below so it forces both Council and administration to manage a budget.
My young daughter and her classmates could likely do a better job. That would actually be a fantastic idea to promote civic engagement and humble this sorry bunch – convene a shadow council of children and let’s see who performs.
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I do not believe we are complaining so much as we are concerned about the spending of this current council. Spending $5,000,000.00 on an overpass because some students are too lazy to walk to a controlled intersection a block away is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. How about a hiring freeze at city hall? There have been postings for new staff consistently over the past few months. How many more staff can we afford to pay for? We are not a huge metropolitan city. Let’s get real here. We the taxpayers cannot afford this proposed tax hike. Especially us seniors who are being forced out of our homes by the increases to just about everything. There are ways to lower this but is anyone at city hall prepared to make the hard decisions.
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How “efficient” was it for the city to buy the Northbridge hotel property, sell off some of it to BC Housing, pay to demolish the hotel, with the city spending a net cost of about $6 million or more, on just 30,000sf of vacant property on Tranquille that it expects to sell off?
How “efficient” was it for the city to make an arbitrary decision to change job specifications in conflict with the CUPE collective agreement and the Community Charter, resulting in costly arbitration over two years which the union won? Depending on how the appeal goes, taxpayers may soon be shelling out upwards of $2 to $5 million in compensation, as well as arbitration and appeal costs.
How “efficient” was it for the city to sell a 3,390 sq ft piece of city property in Brocklehurst for $11.06 /sq ft., far below neighbouring assessed value
of over $40/sq ft?
How “efficient” was it for the city to spend $1million creating a widened sidewalk at the south end of Westsyde Road, which starts and goes nowhere?
How “efficient” was it for the city to spend $73,373 for a local “pest solutions” company to trap and relocate marmots and pigeons? Especially since when pigeons are young, they imprint their location as their natural place to live and always return there, and they can fly over 600 miles in a day.
How “efficient” was it for the city to pay $700,000 to build a fence for CP Rail in exchange for a $200,000 piece of useless property?
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Maybe if the city had been more fiscally responsible with tax revenue over the past couple of years we wouldn’t be facing a double-digit tax hike.
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Right on! The Northbridge Hotel property sits as it did a year ago. Wonder why after the current council promised otherwise? Ask Telus….
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Especially when the city will have to get $200 per square foot (at least–depends if the city will have to reimburse Telus for moving its cell towers and how much demolition costs are still in the offing) for it just to break even :-(
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Last week we received approximately one inch of snow precipitation on two occasions. On each occasion a City’s plow came by and made four passes, in each direction, with ample turnaround time in between. Approximately a month ago the arboriculture crew came by to prune a few low hanging branches on the maple trees adjacent to the sidewalks. A handful of small branches were removed and for each small bundle the diesel-powered chipper was fired-up. Not to mention that a month or so prior they came by to prune a few branches on the maples on the other side of the street.
And don’t leave alone the fact that each person working for the City, from upper management to services attendants and firefighters are very well paid and looked after with already good salaries, other perks and pensions which are an envy to workers and managers everywhere else. And don’t leave alone the fact that the selected few contractors working exclusively for the City are displaying an unprecedented amount of wealth in the form of a flashy fleet of new equipment and large pickups.
The moral of the story here is that “efficiencies” and cos-savings are NOT in the City’s mindset, far from it actually. That this council, just like previous ones don’t seem to bother with challenging the obvious and truly upsetting (in my POV) stagnation in the way the City conducts its business is a real problem. And while it is business as usual the days of 2% are indeed over.
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Maybe if council started to get rid of the deadwood within the departments (ie upper management) where they have their own c licks; get rid of the so called free lunches, get rid of the doubling of services- two different departments giving the same service. Lets stop the rhetoric also the backstabbing.
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