Money is Always "the Carrot"

Monetary coercion.
The dollar carrot.
Or mucho dollars as in this push for sewer hook-ups adjacent to a 10-year old line.

Coldstream municipality's soon-to-be compulsory requirement for sewer hookup for residents whose properties have a sewer line going past their home is meeting with some opposition from residents on Kalamalka, Giles, Pine and Mackie Roads.

Coldstream is planning an "educational" component for residents.
Good idea, as the municipality hasn't even announced how many residences are involved.

The muni's pressure equates to intimidation, as some residents have hinted.
So where's the intimidation?

Change the text to "Local Government Act", and you've got it!

...seems there's a pending bylaw (how convenient for the muni...) that the current $2,000 connection fee (I was under the impression sewer connection was $2,500) would climb 150 per cent (or 100 per cent) to $5,000.  (oops...you can tell I was thinking like a retailer here, and considering the "wholesale" price!   $2,000 to $5,000 is a 250 per cent increase!)

Holy Bylaw!
When was the last time your wages, or your pension cheque, saw a 150 (or 100) per cent increase?

Right.
Never!

Plus...then you'll receive sewer "consumption" on quarterly water invoices.
Oh goody.
Are you sitting down?

Don't forget that your suddenly-new sewer bill (based on water consumption) will include your household's Christmas visitors (which "sets" your sewer rates on that period's consumption for the entire year).  Coldstream muni's water meters are historically read around the first week of December...but that is your 4th Q water consumption.

So for Coldstream residents, the 1st Q water consumption starts at the early-December meter reading! 
Yes, it does. 

Perhaps in a thinly-veiled effort to dilute their intimidating tactic, Coldstream advises the new hook-up to sewer cost would be effective two years after the bylaw's adoption.
Plus CAO Seibel (who easily earns $140,000 annually provided by residents' property tax dollars) says there's financing available for up to 15 years to pay off the debt, with residents advised to "just pay quarterly on the utility bill").

Just pay quarterly!
It's still debt, Mr. Chief Administrative Officer!

But with Coldstream residents' generally large lots whose homes are set quite far back from the property line, there are huge costs involved in bringing the line from the house to the road's sewer connection.  One upset resident stated the costs for him could approach $25,000...with a $15,000 minimum cost.
And in two years, those costs won't have stood still either!  

The Kalamalka Lake Road sewer line was installed in 2006 by Coldstream Meadows as a condition of their Development Permit.  Affected properties run along Giles Drive, Pine Drive, Coldstream Creek Road and Mackie Drive to Coldstream Meadows.


"Maybe Coldstream muni is hiding its head in the sand," Kia would've suggested "because old septic tanks throughout  Coldstream Estates have been leaking for many years."


...and yucky water is actually coming out of the ground onto numerous acreages south of Buchanan Road near Grey Road.
Yup...from Coldstream Estates.

Yessirreebob, Coldstream Municipality supports farming.
Especially carrots.

And tell your Christmas visitors to pee anywhere but at your house.

GVW's Infrastructure Failures

Here comes the preamble to more rate gouging from the North Okanagan's water utility:  Greater Vernon Water.

This was sent to Vernon customers.
Coldstream residents didn't receive a list of what's failed in Coldstream/Lavington; officials presumably haven't compiled it yet, or little has failed, or bureaucrats are sending out only one volley at a time.
Maybe all three.

(click to enlarge)

And there are scads of infrastructure problems in Vernon.
Scads and scads.
Many involve residents whose connection to city services have failed at their property line.
And Vernon--like many other cities--is quick to reject liability, placing blame on the homeowner.

One such complaint--from Tony and Kay Stamboulieh--actually made it into the local newspaper as a Letter to the Editor.

Mr. Stamboulieh summed up what many people feel:

"...an arrogance that does not have a place

 in the function of elected council people,

 including the mayor or the administration

 that taxpayer dollars pay for.

Taxpayers should not be

 treated with such utter disrespect."

We know of one other case that involves a sewer connection at a resident's property line--which has been reported to City of Vernon administration twice in three years...all with no action by the City despite two horrible and dangerous-to-health sewer backups into the residence.

The plumber who was hired--twice--states the problem is with the City's connected/roadside pipe as his "pipe camera" showed both times! 
But nothing's been corrected by the city...presumably because the homeowner can't afford to hire a lawyer.  Interestingly enough, around the corner of the property, an entire street had been dug up by the city, some work had taken place, and then the street was repaved with no contact made to the complaining homeowner not 200 feet away!

"As a consultant has warned, this could happen again and to other taxpayers unless the city upgrades its maintenance practices because we were hooked again in exactly the same way which was again approved by the city. In short, had we not stood up to them, the city would have completely ignored us in terms of their responsibility to assist or to examine their own part in the spill," confirms Mr. Stamboulieh.

"Big Brother is a bully," Kia would've said.

We all know how difficult it is to fight a big brother.