The Fiscal difficulties of the Crowsnest Pass (Secondary Homes)

Over the last week I have received a number of emails, read letters to the editor, and comments on other blogs regarding the taxing of "Secondary Homes".
The fact that we are even having this discussion is one of the the symptoms of the fiscal difficulties that our beautiful municipality faces. Money is very tight here we don't have a large commercial tax base, 85% of our tax base is residential. Out of the last ten years we have ran a deficit most of those years (Available at the Municipal Web Site). Every year getting a budget becomes more and more difficult, some years we get creative to make the numbers work (getting the province to take over our policing costs, refinancing debt over longer time frames). But there are only so many rabbits in the hat and sooner or later you have to take a look at the tough choices, so we look at several options; increasing taxes, cutting spending, increasing debt, or finding other sources of revenue.
We whacked our taxpayers with a 12% increase this last year, with where the world is going, and one third of our residents living on pensions or fixed incomes I hope council does not do that again.
Cutting costs I am told that nobody here wants reduced services, facilities etc, I believe there is a vocal minority in our community that believes the taxpayer should do everything for everybody at whatever cost, I believe we have to spend other peoples money in a responsible manner.
Increasing debt, really should be a last resort how many dollars have different levels of government given to the banks to finance their fiscal irresponsibility. Ottawa pays every year 20-30 billions of dollars just in interest to service its debt, what could the country do with that kind of money. Puts those dollars in to infrastructure, programs etc not banks bottom lines.
Finding other sources of revenue, council directed our administration to look at a number of areas; secondary homes, vacant land, user fees, provincial grants, etc.
The secondary homes argument was spear headed by Canmore, the debate can be looked at from both sides, yes "weekenders" pay full taxes and only use our services for a portion of the year, but because the Crowsnest Pass is not their primary residence they don't get counted in the census numbers, so we do not receive provincial/federal grants for those people which equates to roughly $1200 per year per person. If we have a thousand weekenders that translates to $1,200,000 per year.
I don't believe that the Crowsnest Pass should be looking at a tax on secondary homes, we are not Canmore we do not have big developments moving forward creating new tax base (outside of Ironstone)
The last thing we need to do in these difficult economic times is impose a tax that makes the Crowsnest Pass less attractive.
What we do need to do is get our finances in order, I would like us to bring in a corporate review that looks at our municipality and tells us, where we could be more efficient, the best places to spend our dollars, and where we are duplicating services.