In its online poll back on Feb. 28, The Chief asked readers, "Where should council draw the line on this year's taxes?" To put it in context, District of Squamish staff had come to council with a draft budget that included a 12.1 per cent property tax increase. Naturally, we expected the vast majority of respondents would set the bar far lower than that.
Frankly, we were appalled that almost half -48.5 per cent -clicked on the "12 per cent" button. This, in a town where household budgets are, by and large, pretty tight - big mortgages, not that many decent-paying jobs, and a fairly high population of pensioners on fixed incomes.
We couldn't blame a small sample size - 308 people responded to that poll, the highest number for a weekly Chief poll since the 2011 election. Did people not understand the question? Or do they feel so strongly about maintaining municipal service levels that they're willing to foot a double-digit increase to pay for it?
Mayor Rob Kirkham last week said he thought council had had "a tough slug" through the budget and that the document - which is set to go to a public open house on Monday (April 8) before coming up for final approval - is an indication that that Squamoleans "have a pretty high level of expectation for service."
Perhaps so, but this writer expects there's a significant segment of the community that expected going into this process as we did - that the so-called "tough slug" would end with an increase well shy of 10 per cent. Yes, a lot of fixed costs (policing, labour) that can't be mitigated by trimming a few paper clips. And there are looming infrastructure costs in the hundreds of millions that can't (and shouldn't) be paid for entirely through borrowing.
At council's March 4 budget workshop, though, Coun. Ron Sander said, "there comes a point where the size of the increase is not sustainable on that [taxpayers'] end."
Amen to that. On Monday, we wouldn't be surprised to see a vocal group of residents demanding that council step back into the boxing ring and slug this one out for another round.
- David Burke
