A question, what tax increase would be ok considering taxes on the mill lands will drop to between 1/3 and 1/4 of what they’ve been until now?  Catalyst’s share was about 17% of city taxes.    And that is in addition to current cost increases for municipalities which are greater than inflation generally, and far more than CPI.    I think that is largely because municipalities are currently faced with construction costs due to needing to fix and replace end-of-life infrastructure.  Prime examples for us are sewage treatment, municipal waste management, and the Rec. Complex, not to mention fire hall, roads, etc.  Construction cost inflation over the past 5 years has probably exceeded any other sector.        

Some of us may well be able to absorb significant tax increases.    My spouse and I will be able to for now, but many are already straining to do so; retirees, young people, lower income-earners, increasing numbers.  Collective failure is evidenced by the homeless.  The homeless are on a continuum of relative hardship here and everywhere.    That is generally an uncomfortable way to see our reality for most people because many of us are still fortunate to be relatively comfortable, but where we’re headed is challenging.  There’s an old saying, “if you don’t change direction, you end up where you’re headed.”     

Social wealth is true wealth of community.  Non-profit organizations (NPs), many of which receive tax exemptions, represent significant parts of this, as do the Rec. Complex, the Library, Prisma, the Music Academy, and the Art Centre, etc., which our taxes support.  Permissive tax exemptions (PTEs) are essentially money granted to organizations in support of their value.  The list in the link may be a bit of an eye-opener as to how many community organizations that includes.  It doesn’t list churches, the hospital, or schools which by law don’t pay property taxes either.    

Just for example, the Stardusters Hall [square-dancing] Society receive a $1950.93 exemption annually.  Above and beyond this is another 1/3, so around $1000 the Stardusters would pay to the RD, School taxes, and others. (Page 2 of the tax notice insert describes this.)  That is also paid for by the taxpayers of the city.  (It’s called tax-shift.  It adds another aprox. 1/3 to the $400,000 PTEs. Everyone who does pay compensates by paying more for those who don’t.)  

As well, the Stardusters’ building is leased at well below a market rate.  This is called a contribution agreement.  All the organizations benefitting from the Timberlane buildings, not to mention others, receive that kind of benefit, also paid for by taxpayers.    This all represents the extensive city taxpayer-funded support of non-profit organizations in our community.  There are also Grants in Aid, and Grants in Kind which add up to more tens of 1000s of dollars of granted value.  City taxpayers also contribute to the qRD’s grants in aid which total about $100,000.     

There is currently a misinformed perception in this community that if council goes through with shifting money from the roughly 40% of community forest dividends that has gone directly to non-profits in recent years, we will be decimating support to non-profits in general.  I hope my explanation above outlines how untrue this is of the reality here.  This community’s support of non-profits has exceeded by far what most other BC communities contribute directly to non profits and community social good for many years.  I find this powerfully ironic, but sadly typical at our point in history when misinformation and partial information is readily accepted within normal attention spans.  Reality is more complex and takes work to understand the majority are not willing to do.    Sadly, they are also less inclined to trust leadership and apparently, the luckier we are the more resistant we are to understanding the necessity of change. 

Even more ironic, considering the community forest dividends is that the other 60% has also essentially only supported social wealth, mostly dedicated to the Rec. Complex.   According to the current bylaw governing its use, dividends can’t be used to fund regular capital expenditures, so currently fixing our aging and disintegrating infrastructure is not an acceptable way for CF dividends to be used…   except for the Complex, which I think no one would debate has been a significant feature of our social wealth here.   Furthermore, even the proposed 10% of a 3-year rolling average of CF dividends to be committed to NPs is likely to be well more than a quarter million dollars this year.   Not peanuts.  How much good can a quarter million dollars do?

The community forest is a wholly owned corp. subsidiary of the city, i.e. owned by taxpayers.  Expertly managed by a talented and entirely volunteer board, it has expanded local social asset wealth for 16 years by mostly supporting capital development-type investment.  There is abundant reason to do this but we are not in an economically expanding reality currently for most of our community.  We now must confront the loss of the mill tax base, and balance investment in social wealth with that reality.   One way is to hold back on more expansion of assets for now.   This is hard to face, but the alternatives are harder for many.  It’s time to tighten our belts a little and of course, that’s getting a lot of objections because we’ve had it so good for a long time.   Hopefully, other sources of revenue will eventually compensate for the mill lands tax decrease.     

I hope this helps with perspective.