There is no shortage of groups who come to municipalities with cap in hand, asking for contributions to their causes.
City and town staff, and councillors/ mayors, have a difficult time weighing these requests against their actual return-for-taxpayer bucks.
In our estimation, the City of Parksville, Town of Qualicum Beach and Regional District of Nanaimo get off lightly in terms of their contributions to the Parksville Qualicum Beach Tourism Association (PQBTA).
There’s no disguising the fact the economic driver of this region is tourism. The entire raison d’être of the PQBTA is to seek, secure and deliver those tourism dollars to the communities it serves from Nanoose Bay to Deep Bay.
Those efforts directly translate into healthy businesses, which means jobs for everyone from resort general managers to servers. That, in turn, translates into tax revenue for all levels of governments, which feeds everything from our health-care system to fixing potholes.
We understand there is not really any budget wiggle room for municipal governments these days (is there ever?), so it becomes a constant discussion about priorities and return on investment. It would be simple, but irresponsible, for us to suggest adding costs to towns and cities and regional districts. These costs trickle down to residents and businesses, which defeats the purpose.
So, the trick for municipal staff and elected officials is to weigh return on investments and make hard decisions about what must hit the cutting room floor. The debate is timely — municipal governments are in the process of finalizing their 2013-14 budgets.
We could go line-by-line through expenditures and easily find things to cut that would free up thousands of dollars for groups that would provide real return (PQBTA or the film commission, for example). But it’s our hope, in the next few weeks, municipal staff and elected officials find the courage — political and otherwise — to re-assess the things they have always done, the items they have always funded, and look toward more core causes for the people and financial health of Parksville Qualicum Beach.
— Editorial by John Harding
