EDITOR,
Yesterday (Monday, April 8), the District of Squamish had a budget open house discussion at city hall and I was unable to attend. As a taypayer in Squamish, once again we are getting an increase in our taxes, the latest I have heard is 11.7 per cent. This has changed several times now. When are we ever going to get a break as a taxpayer?? I have lived in Squamish most of my life and over the years we have had many people from different parts of our community on council and as mayors. Over the years, I feel that there has been a lot of unwise decisions on how our taxpayer dollars have been spent as there have been good ones.
At present Squamish is not the town it once was, where big industries paid lots of taxpayer dollars into our district. The industries are long gone now and the district is mainly relying on the residential taxpayer dollars. Thus, council should be cutting back onunnecessaryspending and allowing new industries into Squamish!
Squamish should be really encouraging the film industry to use our beautiful town, there is so much potential here! We have everything in our town; ocean, mountains, rivers, lakes, forests etc. and we are located an hour away from the city and 40 minutes away from Whistler! When a film production comes to town, they spend, spend, spend and this is what we need!
Instead of replacing infrastructure - roads, adding lights etc.... we seem to be spending all our taxpayer dollars on paying employees of the district! We could definitely cut back with the employees of the District of Squamish. I read acomparisonto the employees of the District of North Vancouver and we way out-staff the DNV!
One of the "big white elephants" over the years is the Adventure Centre. To date it is still unable to support itself. Well, then maybe we should look into either selling it or it should look into getting some sort ofsponsorship! We can't afford to keep subsidizing it!
Another "big white elephant" is our waterfront. We have spent money and have seemed to get nowhere with this project except for going into debt!
The district is always hiringconsultantsto do studies, yet do these studies ever get used and have they ever done anything for Squamish?
I personally have been on my strata council for many years now and if we can't afford it, we don't do it! We work within our means! I think that it is time that the mayor and council of Squamish do this too!
Suzanne Kirkman
Squamish
