More tax burden falls on residents
Dear Editor: Penticton residents, when your property tax notice and utility bills climb over the next four years, you have no one to blame but yourselves. You need to attempt to follow the budget and try to comprehend how council transfers the tax burden between the residential and business communities.
This council has bragged that they were elected to implement changes in Penticton, and part of their agenda is to continue to transfer more and more of the tax burden onto the backs of residential taxpayers, whether you can afford it or not.
The budget presentation is completely void of any budgeted detailed allocations of revenues and costs between the residential and the business communities. Personally, I struggle with this lack of transparency. You are now unable to follow whether council is funding a greater portion of operations or utility profits out of your personal bank accounts.
The COP has published budget detail online that is at your fingertips Scroll down an you have 98 pages of budget detail and comparisons.
Some individuals in Penticton struggle with meeting monthly financial commitments. If you have a friend that can do comparisons and calculate percentage increases, get together with that individual and your friends and have a budget study. Failing that, call a council member to go through the budget detail with your group.
You need to realize that this council is attempting to earn as much revenue as possible through the utility accounts. Utility profits that are based on your monthly consumption of electricity, water and sewer. Sewer billings are now calculated on your on water consumption.
Council and administrators do use a portion of profits from the utility accounts to fund operations. The greatest portion of the city operations are funded by property taxes based on the assessed value of your homes, however utility profits are funded equally by all residents based on consumption.
Is using utility profits a fair method of funding operations? That is something that you need to consider based on your personal income situation.
You need to understand how the business tax multiplier and economic investment zones affect your personal quality of life. This council only spent 10 hours to review the budget, faster than it takes for grain to progress through a goose. Ted Wiltse Penticton (last surviving cast is 91. (Banana