I attended a budget meeting at city hall that made me wonder why our elected officials were not up to-date on the budget they were about to vote on.
The curling taxes were set at $3,000 for this budget, so to offset the cost to the Parksville Curling Club, council decided to gift them $3,000. According to my sources, the tax is broken up into several parts with 50 per cent going to Parksville therefore the city pays out $3,000 in a grant but gets back $1,500. Is this good business?
Another item on which council voted was a $600,000 building to archive 75 years of data (what kind of data?). Why do we need a building? Are we not in the Electronic Age? Can we not archive the data on the Cloud, on an onsite electronic storage unit and give the original data to the Parksville museum. Council then decided to defer the archiving until next year or later because of the $30 million-plus water plant.
Why not brief the Parksville councillors on the budget items? The councillors would then understand what they are going to vote on.
What got me was there were only two taxpayers in the audience, former mayor Paul Reitsma and myself. Why only the two of us?
Phil ChabotParksville
