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Municipality rushing to finalize 2010 budget

Public has two weeks to comment on proposed seven per cent tax increase

With the Winter Olympics breathing down Whistler's back, the mayor and six councillors are rushing to finalize the 2010 budget.

Council has already held several meetings to look over the lengthy financial document and they hope to give the budget first, second and third reading during their public meeting on Dec. 1.

Whistler homeowners can expect a seven per cent property tax hike this year.

In other words, a home assessed at $100,000 will likely cost $14 more this year in property taxes, and a home assessed at $500,000 will likely cost $70 more this year in property taxes.

"Basically we are following through with last year's plan, with only some minor changes," Mayor Ken Melamed said on Tuesday.

"We developed those priorities last year. Unless council decides to add something, nothing has changed from our budget consultation last year."

Last spring, council approved a two-year budget, for 2009 and 2010, in anticipation of how busy municipal staff would be this year with the Olympics. The financial document pinned tax increases at eight per cent in 2009 and seven per cent in 2010. Another four per cent increase is expected in 2011.

Melamed said council will likely stick with those forecasted numbers, although they are currently collecting information to make sure all their information is up to date.

Also, starting today, members of the community can submit their comments on the budget at the municipality's online forum on www.whistler.ca or by using the paper feedback forums available at municipal hall's front desk. Questions can also be e-mailed to Ken Roggeman, the municipality's manager of fiscal planning, at kroggeman@whistler.ca .

The municipality will collect public feedback until Thursday, Nov. 26.

"We engaged in the biggest-ever engagement process last year to try and give us enough time and space to do a two-year budget, with an understanding that there might be some tweaks and adjustments," said Melamed.

"We have a better sense now of the actual revenues versus the projections, and it is just a matter of putting that all into a spreadsheet and coming up with some final direction, which council will do."

The mayor said he was originally hoping last year's projections would have been conservative and council would be able to set property taxes below seven per cent in 2010.

But after pushing pay parking back until this month, following the public outcry, the municipality's forecasts are off.

"That was one of the reasons I had concerns about moving away from pay parking back in August," said Melamed. "In August, I already had a sense that we might not be able to accomplish any reduction of the proposed tax increase."

He added, however, property taxes will most likely not creep beyond seven per cent.

In 2008 there was a tax increase of 5.5 per cent. That was the first time council increased taxes above the rate of inflation in more than 20 years.

The series of tax increases is intended to mitigate the multi-million dollar shortfall the municipality faces. Factors affecting the local government's finances include lost revenue from a change in hotel taxes classifications, declining hotel revenues, loss of development cost charges with Whistler reaching build out, and a struggling economy. Costs have also gone up.

Among the items on council's to-do agenda this year are a major review of Whistler's Official Community Plan as well as the Whistler 2010 document.

The second phase of the Whistler Celebration Plaza construction project is also on the books at a cost of approximately $4.2 million to the municipality. Construction work this year following the Olympics will include building amphitheatre stairs, installing playground features, reforestation and landscaping.

And the municipality has also scheduled a $1.3 million upgrade to Mountain Square, in Whistler Village, to start this year.

 

 

 

CFIB report calls municipal spending 'unsustainable'

Whistler is among the municipalities in British Columbia that has a spending problem, according to a recent report released by The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).

Called "B.C. Municipal Spending Watch," the report by the business organization showed that municipal operating spending outpaced population and inflation growth between 2000 and 2007.

CFIB researchers said municipal wages are a substantial driver of this spending, with municipal employees earning 35 per cent more in wages and benefits than they would make in equivalent jobs in the private sector.

In Whistler, the actual spending increase was 81 per cent. Comparatively, spending held to the rate of population and inflation growth should have only increased 24.3 per cent.

"By not holding spending increases to population and inflation growth, taxes and fees were $16.8 million higher than necessary in 2007," read the report.

But Whistler Mayor, Ken Melamed, this week called the report "misleading and alarmist."

He stressed it is hard to compare Whistler to other communities in British Columbia because even though the resort municipality's permanent population is only 10,000, the population often swells to 50,000.

"Our snow clearing budget doesn't clear snow for 10,000 people," said Melamed.

The mayor added that the CFIB report speaks to how much the federal and provincial governments are continuing to download onto municipal governments.

"What is becoming practice is for federal and provincial governments to win elections by announcing tax decreases," said Melamed. "The effect of that has been to place the burden at the bottom of the scale, at the municipal level, who have to pick up the costs."