re: North Saanich sticks to zero tax increase (News April 20)
The news item states “North Saanich stuck to its zero tax increase promise”. As a council, North Saanich made no such promise – the zero is an obsession of Coun. Dunstan Browne who has managed to get the rest of his gang of four to go along with him while Mayor Alice Finall and councillors Celia Stock and Elsie McMurphy voted in favour to avoid the usual G4 steamroller, while voicing the caveats that we all do well to remember.
This is not a good budget – it is financial lunacy – robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to gratify the G4 mania for confrontation.
I am old and retired but if I had come up with schemes like this when I was working for major international companies I would have been fired, and rightly so. Council is fooling us by raiding reserves to absorb Capital Regional District water increases just to gratify Coun. Browne. The decaying infrastructure of water pipes and roads and sewers and storm drains will not go away. Party now and pay later – courtesy of the G4. At this rate, by the time we come to the end of this council’s mandate we will look like a broken down Third World township with its leaking water pipes and potholed roads.
My pensions, small though they may be, went up by about the rate of inflation this year. I don’t mind paying some of that in taxes to maintain our infrastructure, instead of loading it on to the younger people in the years to come. Taxes are an investment in our community, not the great evil which Browne and the G4 would have us believe.
David Olsen
North Saanich
