Tax increases seemingly inevitable
Every year when the tax assessments come out, there is always the caveat that it does not necessarily mean your taxes will go up. Hogwash.
They never mention how the CVRD always comes forward with initiatives that are not part of the regular taxes. Case in point are the housing and water initiatives. Add to that there is the Sportsplex group asking for more. On top of that, the CVRD is trying to take over garbage pick-up, at hundreds of dollars, and push out a private service. This will mean new trucks, drivers, staff and a bump in pay for the Manager, as this person will now have more responsibility. More taxes.
We will now have to curtail how much we give to the food bank. As this is all we ever donate to, we don’t think we can continue buying several hundred dollars worth of sale items, throughout the year, such as small hams, bacon and other items which we feel they might appreciate. Not that we are rolling in dollar bills but we feel that this is something we could and should do. We will continue to give the surplus vegetables from our garden. Monies will have to go towards taxes instead.
As for the leeches bringing forward their requests complete with glossy photos, charts and graphs and polished speakers making their case, they are in senior government territory and they have no business double dipping. They like to say “skin in the game” when making their pitch. That comes from Warren Buffett and it meant that he put in his own money for a project. Not from the taxpayer.
The CVRD goes glassy eyed with all the shiny objects and sob stories and, when approved, will use the taxpayers’ monies to convince us that this is a worthy endeavour. Perhaps it is time to form one centralized taxpayer group and copy what these others have done. We might even get funding so we can afford to pay all these extra taxes.
Note that the CVRD does not use the parcel tax to determine taxes. It is always based on per $100K. Ours just went up by that much and we did not even do anything. I guess the CVRD thinks that a higher assessment equates to wealth. Being on a pension and little in the bank, all of our “wealth” is in the house and property. This won’t be realized until one sells. Of course, when that time comes, the market will have crashed and so long to funding your remaining years. There are many like us and we are subsidizing the lower value housing where there may be two working people with good incomes, who take holidays and own all manner of recreational items. We don’t have any of that but the CVRD only sees your assessment. There is no means test.
Get out to the budget meetings and voice your displeasure. Taxes have to be fair and they don’t care.
Ed Aiken
Cobble Hill