Will Your Income Increase 24.5% In 4 Years?

Property Taxes WILL
Increase by 24.5% In Nanaimo

If you take the time to read some of those impressive financial reports prepared by your City staff you will see that right now property taxes are to increase 24.5% over the next four years! Source: pg. 29 City of Nanaimo 2009 -2013 Financial Plan.

Will your income keep pace?

Remember those ever increasing property taxes are the direct result of the past years of management by those elected to council and those highly paid city managers who are charged with taking care of your tax dollars.

Also gleaned from the pages of those financial reports is another interesting fact I found astounding; 63% of your property taxes go to pay wages and salaries! Source: pg. 106 2009 Financial Report.

As a part of the staff assessment that new city manager Mr. A. Kenning is to undertake it would be interesting to know how many city employees are earning in excess of $100,000.00 annually including salaries, wages, benefits etc.

Increasing Taxes By Reducing Services

The latest announcement which falls into this category is the fact that curbside garbage pick up will be reduced to every other week rather than weekly. Your fees will not be reduced by 50%, in fact they are expected to increase.

In addition to the above 24.5% direct property tax increase you can expect user fees for things like water etc. to increase over this period also. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that the total cost via taxes and fees to Nanaimo residents will increase by at least 30% over the next four years.

Throwing Money At Downtown Hotel
Without a Business Plan.

Recently council wisely decided not to pay $100,000.00 to hire someone to try and persuade someone to build a hotel in downtown Nanaimo. The Mayor, some on council and city staff thought it was still a good idea even though there is NO business plan in place to support the notion a hotel will equal more conventions.

It would be good if someone taking care of tax dollars would hammer out a real business plan to determine just how much farther into the hole we are prepared to go before we consider alternatives for the VICC.

Last year at about this time I was hopeful our newly elected council would make some serious changes to how the city is run, to date I am disappointed. Their most defining decision to date was to pay half a million dollars to someone who wanted to retire early and then can't talk about it. If this is an example of how they will be handling the affairs of the city, God help us.