OSOYOOS TIMES-March 24, 2010

By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times

The Regional District Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) board of directors narrowly passed a contentious $40.4-million budget for 2010 at their March 18 meeting.
A weighted vote of 66 per cent was needed to pass the budget and 69 per cent of the board’s votes were in favour of the budget.
The reason for the narrow margin is because directors representing Penticton, including board chair Dan Ashton, hold a greater number of votes than other directors and four of them voted against passing the budget because of concerns about Penticton’s tax requisition rate.
Director Dan Albas, a Penticton councillor, told the board he had a problem with Penticton facing a 10.9 per cent requisition increase this year.
The city’s requisition total for 2010 is more than $1.6 million, up $164,000 from last year, partly due to the hiring of four new full-time firefighters.
Albas said such a requisition was hard to stomach when Penticton was facing “immense stress and pressure” in trying to deal with city expenses.
He wanted to compare this year’s budget numbers with rates from three years ago just prior to the final vote but other board members shot his request down, saying it was not the time for such an analysis.
Although Jim Tarves, the RDOS’s acting financial manager, said the final tax increase calculations won’t be completed until next month when revised 2010 property assessment numbers are made available, requisition rates represented at the meeting show Osoyoos faces a tax requisition of $686,685 and rural Area A can expect a requisition of just more than $840,000 for 2010.
Area A Director Mark Pendergraft introduced several motions prior to the adoption vote to help bring down his area’s requisition rate.
One of Pendergraft’s motions which was approved was to use new subdivision servicing fees to bring down the RDOS requisition.
The board had voted in favour of increasing such fees earlier in the meeting.
The fee for administration services relating to subdivision servicing has increased to $400 from $300 with an “additional lot” fee of $500 and a “per lot adjusted” fee of $100.
Pendergraft also moved to make changes to Area A’s grant-in-aid and rural projects functions to reduce requisitions by $20,000 and a further motion was passed allowing for the purchase of a water tender for the Anarchist Mountain Fire Department to be financed by debenture proceeds over five years as opposed to one payment.
The water tender in question was behind the largest increase in requisition amounts for Area A in 2010.
In 2009, the requisition amount for that service was $119,580.
That amount has increased this year by more than $108,000 to $227,915, mainly due to the department’s request for a new water tender, Pendergraft said.
Mayor Stu Wells, who serves as a municipal director on the board, and Pendergraft called for $63,000 to be pulled out of a capital reserve for Osoyoos’s Sun Bowl Arena to bring the tax requisition amount for Area A and Osoyoos down by $63,000.
A motion brought forward by Area C Director Allan Patton that was supported by Pendergraft to increase building permit fees from $10 to $12 per $1,000 was defeated by the board.
Although RDOS board and staff members spent nearly all of Feb. 25 trimming the budget which had received first reading on Feb. 11, Area A residents voiced their displeasure with projected tax increases at a heated budget presentation in Osoyoos on March 15.
According to the 2010 budget, the average tax rate in Area A per $1,000 of assessed property value will be $1.54, up from $1.52 in 2009.
The overall tax requisition for the RDOS this year as presented at the March 18 meeting is $12,983,740, up from $11,953,318 in 2009.
Overall requisitions for the RDOS were reduced by $514,128 from the proposed budget that received first reading due to an increase in the amount of surpluses brought forward from 2009 into the 2010 budget.
One of the largest surplus amounts used comes from the Penticton’s Campbell Mountain Landfill at $260,000 which is being contributed to the RDOS operating reserve.
According to an RDOS press release, “the budget has increased significantly to fund the 911 function, to which all electoral areas and municipalities contribute.”
The board was under pressure to pass the budget prior to March 31 due to guidelines set out in the Local Government Act.
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