and a 17.6% Fee Increase
This does not include the RDN, School or Hospital Tax hike........
At Monday's council meeting you might expect to hear what a wonderful job your hard working city councillors have done by keeping this years tax increase to only 2.5% after wrestling it down from the 4.2% increase earlier predicted. Sound familiar?? They say it every year, if you haven't noticed.
Well, if this is your first city hall budget rodeo you will be forgiven if you don't see through the smoke and mirrors and carefully crafted bafflegab designed to distract from the fact that taxes will be going up by 16.4% over the next five years, and fees will be up another 17.6% in the same time.
The tax and spend party presiding over city hall seem to think Nanaimo taxpayers have a bottomless pit and there is no end to how many creative ways they should spend your money. A couple of glaring examples are $1,000,000 to repaint the murals at the city pools and another $250,000 for a new hot tub at Beban Park pool. Add to that the fact they have once again chosen to over tax us by $4,000,000 last year and have stuffed it into one of those hidden slush funds they seem to favour. I guess you never know when they might want another $20 million or so for a shiny new office.
Don't be misled by all of the reductions they will claim they were able to remove from the original five year plan. In fact all they have done is removed funding for the RCMP extra staff, and funding for a new firehall from the current plan, which makes it look better in an election year. Don't be fooled however, as all of those items can magically be added back in, anytime council should chose to do so.
I have asked all members of city council to tell me how they determine what level of taxation is affordable and sustainable ...................... none of them could tell me.
It seems to be a common bit of sleight of hand....... we are first presented with an overstated tax increase, and after months of hard work we are faced with ONLY another 2.5 - 3% tax increase, for which we are supposed to be so grateful. Nonsense!! Give us back the $4 million from last year, and give us a ZERO tax increase this year.
ReplyDelete