CVRD spending out of control
In December, 2016, the CVRD board decided on a six per cent budget increase for 2017 so the administration could plan effectively for 2017.
In mid-2017, the CVRD board discovers that more money is needed to meet 2017 needs that were supposedly not apparent to them in December, 2016. These expenditures include: $1.43 million for known changes in Mesachie Lake sewer system; $950,000 costs for known Meade Creek Recycling Centre closure; $750,000 for unspecified “environmental services”; and $150,000 for further Kinsol Trestle rehabilitation. That these projects were unknown and that reasonable 2017 estimates were not available in December 2016 begs credulity. Rather, it is merely a cover-up for bleeding more tax dollars — and it happens every year, regardless of when the supposed budget is set.
At one budget public hearing in early 2017, Mark Keuber, director of Finance, and Brian Carruthers, CAO, were asked why the CVRD board did not set one or more maximum tax increase options before all the budget “requirements” from the myriad operational fiefdoms [e.g., recreation commissions] were submitted. Mark Keuber’s response was that it would not be possible due to the complexity of the CVRD budget. When this question was restated to Mr. Carruthers, he acknowledged that the board could set a limit to the overall tax increase, but it would make it difficult for Finance to work that back through the 177 individual budgets that make up the overall CVRD budget.
In other words, it can be done and the writer suggests that it should be done. Does this practice of the board result from lack of commitment, irresponsibility, ignorance, laziness? Whatever the answer may be, it is not a reason but an excuse.
Last year the CVRD board, in its wisdom, decided to set the 2017 budget in December 2016, instead of mid-2017, in order to plan 2017 expenditures effectively. So much for effective planning.
Pat Mulcahy
Saltair
P.S. The only CVRD increase in last five years of less than six per cent was 2.36 per cent in 2014. Why? The answer: because 2014 was an election year. The “cost consciousness” of CVRD boards is hypocritically cyclical and only surfaces in election years. Once elected, the board’s mantra reverts from cost sensitivity to “let the good times roll”.
Over past five or more years, other similar municipal authorities [including other regional districts] with few exceptions have exercised restraint running between one per cent to three per cent overall annual increases, but not the CVRD.