Just a comment to add to your debate.

Cheers.

Anyway….

I made a mistake in the information I provided above. New West does NOT have the second highest revenue per capita of any city in BC – it has the third highest spending of cities over 25,000 people (behind West Van and Penticton). To re-iterate, the city doesn’t have to spend money on collecting garbage and recycling from apartment and townhouse complexes, so where is the money being spent? I need to read the city budget, I suppose.

The original report is here:

http://www.cfib.ca/research/reports/rr3061.pdf

This report is written by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and while I don’t doubtthe numbers, it is most likely biased against anything relating to businesses being taxed.

Does anyone have a comment to make about the city duplicating the services of BC Hydro in regards to providing an electrical service that doesn’t seem to be any better or worse? There is a large staff at City Hall involved in the reselling of energy purchased by BC Hydro.

I think the city collects too much money via property taxes. I’d rather have more cheap red wine (or maybe my wife and I can bump up to the $12 bottles).

The city generates more revenue than any other city in BC other than West Vancouver, and they have their own transit system.

New Westminster has the highest percentage of rentals (and rentals are typically mult-family), so for all the money the city collects, it’s not collecting money for garbage and recycling from many households.

I don’t want to start an online debate, but I am unhappy with how the city handled the repair issue @ Moody Park pool a few years back, the school closure and hiring/firing of the janitors (school board related, but still civic), the low fees applied to new developments (until the economy stopped most local development, and then the fees were increased), and so forth.

We do seem to have city governance that wilts at the first sign of vocal opposition.

What is going to happen with Canada Games needs replacing soon? I can’t even begin to imagine how much back and forth that is going to cause.

I am not sure a separate billing and phone service helps keeps the lights on, and how often they go out is more dependent on geography, trees, and weather. A better measure would be, if they go out, how fast they come back on, relative to other municipalities.

According to the 2009 budget, the city claims that while the residential tax rate is the second highest in Greater Vancouver, the average assessed value is one of the lowest because of the number of multi-family dwellings. In other words, if our residential tax rate is high, then it's ok because we have more than average low-value property units and the city doesn't collect much from them. So people with homes pay lots, but that's ok – there are lots of condos with low assessed values that don't pay much to the city.

West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Kits, etc, have become so expensive that the police and firefighters that work in those areas live far away (Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, etc), and as a result, if there is a region wide catastrophe, those areas may be without police and fire personnel. Keeping costs low means we have our share of people with desirable skills.

We may be disadvantages with respect to our infrastructure. We do seem to have a higher proportion of lower-income individuals, but the financial burden tends to be on provincial shoulders.

David

I think New West is also challenged by being an older city (which means there are lots of infrastructure replacement & maintenance costs that newer municipalities aren't faced with) and also a city that shoulders a disproportionate burden of the responsibility for the poor and marginalized. At least some of our city's funds are going towards programs that benefit poor folk from surrounding areas.

You're welcome to share your POV in the comments or write a guest post for us if you'd like to go in more detail about how you think the city ought to spend our tax money.