Savvy Taxpayers

They're watching Coldstream and Vernon more than ever.

And not liking what they see.

Yet another Letter to Editor, Vernon Morning Star, February 13, 2013, condensed for brevity:

"The electorate of Vernon have three mutually contradictory objectives:  low, zero or, (gasp!), even negative, changes to tax rates, no increases in user fees, and no reductions in services.

"Why is it always easier to find reasons to spend

than to not spend?"

W.Polnicky

These three goals cannot be attained simultaneously unless the overall size of the economy of Vernon grows, so that we have a larger tax base to fund the same level of services with no tax or user fee increases...
During the last civic election campaign a number of residents expressed concern about the parlous(sic...perilous) state of the local economy.

I recently attended the 'public workshop' in support of the...Core Services Review.  Most of the potential cost-savings opportunities presented, some of them in the millions of dollars per year, were summarily rejected by the public present.

Why is it always easier to find reasons to spend than to not spend?  Why is it always easier to hire more staff than to reduce staff, this at a time when the amount and proportion of the city budget dedicated to staff wages continues to grow faster than either the tax base or the population?  How can this possibly be sustainable?

Have we not learned from the Canadian experience in the 1990s, and the U.S. and European experiences right now that, while paying the piper can be postponed at a cost, sooner or later he insists on being paid?

...an obvious first step is for our political leaders to declare their vision and commitment to the world (business, investment, entrepreneurs, other governments...) -- that Vernon's exclusive focus is the economy, and that all other considerations, bar none, are of far less importance.

Ah, but I hear you muttering under your breath, what about my favourite crusade (insert personal agenda here)?  Well, if Vernon cannot afford to pay for your favoured program, it will have to be cut in the future if not today, so why don't we stop bickering over who gets a slice of a shrinking pie and instead try to make the pie larger?  

...If we continue on our current trajectory, our city will continue to slide into irrelevance, our taxes will increase, our services will diminish, and our city bureaucracy will increase until it consumes our entire budget.  We need to wake up from our Okanagan dreamland and face reality."     Wynn Polnicky.

"Preferably before we become another ghost town," offers Kia.

Ah...the North Okanagan experience.