CIVIC ELECTION ISSUES – The myth of City Hall taxing Sun Rivers, New Afton

Part Three in a series on some of the key issues raised in the current civic election campaign.

By MEL ROTHENBURGER
Publisher, ArmchairMayor.ca

ARE SUN RIVERS residents getting a free ride from the City? Mayoral candidate Mike O’Reilly contends they’re mooching (my word, not his), in effect, off their urban cousins.

It’s a claim he’s been making for several years, and has raised it again during the current civic election campaign in answer to what he’d do about high taxes in Kamloops.

A half dozen years ago, O’Reilly said Sun Rivers and neighbouring Sienna Ridge were freeloading from the city to the extent of $250,000. Now, he insists the number is around $800,000 to a million.

That’s because he’s reframed his argument.

Five years ago O’Reilly was arguing that non-TteS residents of Sun Rivers should be paying hospital taxes similar to what Kamloops residents do. That amounted to $250,000 City taxpayers were saddled with as a result of the fact Sun Rivers folks don’t have to contribute to major health infrastructure, according to O’Reilly.

“Everybody else in the TNRD actually pays 40 per cent of the cost of the new hospital and new equipment — with the exception of Sun Rivers and Sienna Ridge — and that to me is not a level playing field whatsoever,” O’Reilly was quoted as saying at the time, in his position as a Thompson Regional Hospital District director.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc council listened, and turned him down flat.

Now, on the election hustings, O’Reilly has expanded his ambition. Sun Rivers and Sienna Ridge, he says, enjoy the same quality of life as Kamloops residents “while paying only a fraction of the costs for municipal parks and recreation facilities.”

This, he insists, translates to a tax shortfall in Kamloops of “nearly” $800,000 to $1 million per year. Or, a tax subsidy of .5 percent to .65 percent.

While calculating the number for hospitals is relatively simple, his claim about parks and recreation facilities could bear some scrutiny. It sounds more like a rough guess.

Lacking consent from the Band, it might theoretically be possible to levy disproportionately hefty user fees against non-City residents at City amenities. But how to do it — station guards at the doors checking for proof of residency?

Bringing Sun Rivers and Sienna Ridge into the picture when plans for the Performing Arts Centre were being developed might have been possible by including them in a referendum but that obviously didn’t happen.

The O’Reilly plan would, basically, force several thousand non-City residents to pay taxes to the City without any voice in City decisions or policies. It’s called taxation without representation, and revolutions have been fought over that sort of thing.

O’Reilly also wants to annex the New Afton mine west of town. That, according to O’Reilly’s arithmetic, would cut City property taxes by one to 1.5 percent.

Expanding the City’s boundaries to take in New Afton was attempted years ago and failed, and it’s doubtful anything much has changed since then, but more on that in a minute.

These scenarios are theoretically a way to expand the City’s tax base in order to bring down property taxes, a different approach than his competitor Nelly Dever’s “Co-build” proposal for building new infrastructure.

But it’s no more than a wish, a goal. As O’Reilly acknowledges in his platform, in so many words, they’re basically nice-to-haves.

The Ttes can’t be forced to start taxing Sun Rivers and Sienna Ridge residents more so it can then turn over a bunch of cash to the City. But, he says, he’d begin negotiations “right away,” while admitting it wouldn’t “happen overnight.”

Why TteS would change its mind on the matter five years later, just because O’Reilly now wants to get at it “right away” is hard to figure. O’Reilly also ignores a very important fact about taxes paid by residents of reserve subdivisions.

When Sun Rivers was created by federal law at the turn of the century with a special 99-year leasing framework, the concept and practice of equal taxation was built in. Equal taxation, that is, to the City of Kamloops. It was deemed proper that a Sun Rivers family should pay the same amount of taxes as city dwellers living in a house of similar value.

The difference is that Sun Rivers residents pay their taxes to the Band while City residents ante up to City Hall.

Sienna Ridge was established under the same federal regulation as Sun Rivers.

So, non-status residents on the reserve are already paying their fair share. To get at that million dollars O’Reilly is talking about, the Band would either have to increase their taxes and, thereby, create an inequity, or carve off part of what the Band receives and hand it over to the City.

Not gonna happen.

And, of course, there’s the tremendous economic contribution Sun Rivers and Sienna Ridge residents make to City coffers when they go into town to buy goods and play, without the City having to pay a dime for the roads, utilities and services in those communities.

As for New Afton, well, best of luck. Then-mayor Peter Milobar and his council tried it in 2014, and failed. To achieve annexation, the City would have had to negotiate agreement among a bewildering array of stakeholders including several provincial ministries, the TteS and Skeetchestn Bands (which already had, and have, revenue-sharing agreements on the mine) and, not least, the TNRD (which receives some tax revenue from New Afton).

After all that, it would have to go to the residents of Kamloops for permission via — may I say it — an AAP or referendum.

The plan was preceded by a gradual lessening of heavy-industrial tax rates by the City so the New Afton annexation would have simply assuaged the budget pain a little. There was really nothing in it for New Afton.

With the two Bands threatening legal action unless the City shared a substantial portion of resulting tax revenues, and opposition from the mine, the idea was dropped.

Reviving the New Afton scenario, along with Sun Rivers, is mere spitballing, blue skying, but it gives O’Reilly  something to talk about when the issue of property taxes comes up.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. 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.