I was going to title this update something different but then I was informed, that "your right to know" or "rumors and facts" were already taken.
So I will just stick to the old fashioned bland Update from the Crowsnest Pass.
What's happened since I last posted with good old politics in the Crowsnest Pass?
Just before Christmas we achieved several things:
We completed a budget prior to the end of the year a first since I have been on council.
How did we do this? several ways we directed administration to bring back a budget with no more than a 3% increase, that's the good news.
Then we increased our revenue in the following areas:
Water Rates increase by $3.00 per month per household (last increase 2002)
Garbage Rates increase by $1.50 per month per household (last increase 2007)
Municipal Electrical Rates will increase $12.28 per month between now and July 1, (last increase 2002). This will bring our rates in line with Fortis in the Crowsnest Pass we are in the unusually position of half our tenants are on the municipal system and half are on Fortis.
You may ask why rates have not increased since 2002, that's a good question and to ensure that it does not happen again administration as been directed to bring to Council on a annual basis a review of all municipal charges, fees, and fines.
The other new measure we introduced was a Minimum tax, $500 per tax roll number. There is no question this is a new revenue stream for the Municipality. Several comments based on last years mill rate if your property was worth more than $50,000 you were already paying more than $500. If you own a second property next to your principal property that you only use for your on needs you can consolidate in to the principal property and avoid the minimum tax.
The net result of this budget is that the typically average resident is going to see the lowest tax increase in the last five years. (subject to variations in assessment values).
Just prior to Christmas we also reached a collective agreement with our employees (CUPE), its a two year agreement, which I will not comment further on until our employees have had the chance to ratify it on Jan 21.
Crowsnest Centre, yes the saga continues. Despite the society taking the position that they did not need municipal tax dollars for 2009, we the taxpayers did have to pay their Nexen and telus bills in December. And yes the municipality did pay those bills out of reserve dollars that were generated by an insurance payout on the old centre budget.
Where I get confused is that some people think that those Insurance dollars belonged to the centre. The last I checked the Centre is an asset owned by the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass (taxpayers) just like the arenas, the equipment we own and any other assets. Which pot the money goes into and where it is spent is a decision made by the "elected" representatives of the taxpayers, not some unelected board that we never have to face an election.
Newspaper advertising, finally after arguing this issue for 5 years council agreed to tender this out to the lowest bidder. Our advertising cost for 2009 will be somewhere around $30-35,000 previous years as high as $110,000 that's a savings of roughly $70,000 a year over the five years that I have raised this issue a potential savings of $350,000 that could have purchase four additional used graders. Without costing the taxpayer one extra dollar.
Arguments were made that one papers page was larger than the other, I don't care, as long as the information can be read does it matter if the words are larger in one paper than the other? It was a simple decision in May and again in December, which paper had the lowest cost per page. That is the way I will always vote on this issue. The other argument that was made was that tax dollars are going out of town. Does that mean we should spend higher taxpayer dollars to give a contract to a local contractor?
That will work well when we are handing out $5,000,000 Infrastructure contracts.
Off site levies, it came to my attention just before the holidays that a local resident, who had been living in a older single wide trailer for years had purchased a new modular home put it on the same lot, and was told that he was going to be charged off site levies. My impression of off site levies, were that they would be charged against new developments where somebody was taking a bare piece of land and adding burden to the municipalities infrastructure, or if you were taking a piece of land that had one residence on it and replacing it with a duplex, apartment building etc, where once again the burden on municipal infrastructure was being increased. Fortunately after a debate amongst council it was agreed that the bylaw would be rewritten to ensure this does not happen again.
Going back to Budget, even though council as passed the budget the process is not completely over at this point. We have to wait for the province to set the educational levy so we can set the mill rate. In between I am hoping that council will keep working to cut costs and increase the surplus, we have a problem that is not going to go away.
Our reserves will be down to $670,000 by the end of the year, we are spending $520,000 this year out of reserves to complete capital projects. What happens after 2011 when our reserves run out. We need to start putting dollars back into those reserves this year.
Anyway a little update on things in the Crowsnest Pass
7 comments:
The municipality should considering metering water and limiting garbage. Jump on board with the green movement, and perhaps show people just how much water they use, and garbage they accumulate. I mean majority of communities already do this and those who let the water flow freely can pay a little extra. It will also increase the amount of recycling if people are limited to say 3 bags instead of an unlimited amount. Lets get behind the green movement and use it to promote and preserve the beauty of the pass.
Trevor
Thanks for the update, Dean.
Before council goes patting themselves on the back about what a great job they have done regarding taxes, I must say I am disappointed.It does not matter that garbage and water rates have not been raised for years.Incresing these makes my overall tax bill go up by about 5.5%.Not that I would have been happy with 3%.Property taxes and other charges should only go up by the inflation amount, unless there is a major purchase(rec centre not a grader).We are headed into very dangerous territory as taxes seem to double about every 12 -14 years.So imagine 25 years from now your 2000$ tax bill of today doubles twice and now you are paying 8000$.We have to quit spending and if that means less services, so be it.
No patting on the back here, I personally am not a big fan of raising taxes. I like you believe that taxes should not without one hell of a good reason go up more than the rate of inflation. Where we made a mistake is that we have not looked at the other areas on an annual basis. So we did do some catch up, but that should never happen again if all charges, fees, fines etc are reviewed every year as part of the budget process. This is no way any council should be saying we have not looked at those rates in eight years.
To Trevor
There is a 5 bag limit on garbage.
Trevor
There is indeed a 5 bag limit, which in itself is not a limit that encourages recycling.
When we had the debate on putting in place a limit our mayor proposed 9 bags. Thank goodness common sense prevailed to a degree.
When I did some research I found Pincher creek was at 2 bags, Sparwood 2 bags and Elkford at the equivalent of 2 bags.
The last time I checked the Elk Valley was recycling about 20% of its over all garbage. The Crowsnest Pass was at about 4%.
On the off site levy issue. If someone moves from an old house into a newly built house in the Municipality and uses the same amount of sewer and water does this create a "burden" on the system? Considering the resident had to put in their own sewer and water lines to the street and tie into a pre-existing pipe that cost maybe $200.00 in the 70's to install, should they be nailed? Even considering that the bare land generated propery taxes year after year and basically netted in a 100% profit on every payment is this a burden? A family moves from a house billing $1500 per year in taxes to a new one billing $5000 and gets an additional off site levi TAX because THEY are creating a burden? I think more than anything they are the ones propping up the coffers and should not be penalized. Dean, could you post who, in the last session of council, voted in favor of this TAX prior to really hammering out the details? And yes, it is a TAX because all that bare land property tax revenue should have been going into a separate pot for future development and it didn't. As a result we have no money to deal with our infrastructure demands and some wizard came up with an idea to grab more money out of our pockets via the TAX method.
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