It’s easy to spend other people’s money and the CVRD are experts at doing that. The CVRD continues to waste millions every year on do-nothing departments like economic development even after they have been told about the mess there.
Planning for a five per cent spending increase on their $80 million budget in 2016 is obscene and another taxpayer ripoff because of the low inflation period we are in.
These increases are simply to build the CVRD empire without any service improvement. Special interests get special attention and tax dollars from a CVRD board that rarely says no, even for goofy ideas.
The board could easily cut waste, spending and have a major reduction in taxes by simply representing taxpayers instead of the CVRD and special interests. The CVRD gives away most of its recreation and culture activities at way below cost.
In 2014 they gave away in secret almost $500,000 in severance and golden handshakes to employees who were also rewarded with generous, fully indexed pensions. The board members collected close to $450,000 in pay and expenses and that will jump significantly as the board has now given themselves many benefits that most taxpayers can only dream about. Most of us have to pay our own medical premiums but now we are forced to pay these for CVRD directors. It’s about time directors were prohibited from directly giving themselves more taxpayer money.
The CVRD budget process is a Mickey Mouse, old style, amateur approach that hasn’t changed in decades. First they give themselves and their more than 200 employees a raise every year and without fail, the salaries, benefits and expenses increase.
They simply add more money to most departments and always increase overall spending. Almost every legal action they take on, they lose at huge cost to Cowichan taxpayers.
The staff prepare the budget and the CVRD board rubber stamps the spending with minimal oversight or genuine review. The public is kept out of the behind-closed-doors process. There are never any real priorities or performance measures identified. Taxpayers were hoping for real change after the last board election but the same old-same old continues as usual.
The CVRD have doubled spending in less than 10 years while the local, real-world economy struggles and taxpayers never see a raise in their incomes. The CVRD pays its head bureaucrats extremely well and they are now in the top five per cent of Canadian earners. Is that really necessary?
The CVRD anti-business attitude is well known and reflected by their cavalier approach to taxing and spending. The CVRD continually abuses the Alternate Approval Process to sneak through even more tax increases when it knows these increases would fail if the spending was put to a real referendum.
It’s time the provincial government steps in and protects us from the CVRD, their poor management of public funds and their disrespect for taxpayers.
W.E. (Bill) Dumont
Cobble Hill
