Editor:
It seems this new White Rock council is not going to run a “Smart City” but has plans for the residents and taxpayers, which will create negative impacts for us all.
First order of business was they once again reaffirmed their policy of abandonment of multi-family solid-waste collection.
An essential service to 11,000 residents was eliminated in 2015.
Not surprisingly, this supposed fresh-start council, after spending $60,000 on consultants, has gone with the status quo.
Surrey is able to provide that service to multi-family residences, but the City of White Rock cannot or will not.
Why do those 11,000 residents pay municipal taxes?
Next, they are proposing an unprecedented nine per cent-plus property tax increase.
To cap off this dystopian initiative, they are entertaining taxing multi-family residents at a higher rate than single-family residents.
Now, that is a lopsided endeavour if I ever heard one. Property taxes are based on a property’s assessed value.
Being as single-family homes are on their own land, their assessments are usually much higher than the average multi family dwelling.
Being as condos are in densified clusters on a limited amount of land, the owners, en masse, end up paying an exponential amount in more taxes than single-family structures on the same amount of land.
This has been the usual selling point when successive White Rock councils have rammed densification down our throats and ignored both the OCP and the residents. Now it seems they want an even more lopsided cash-grab from condo owners at the benefit of single-family home owners?
I heard a lot of promises from these seven people before the election. Once they passed the gate it seems they threw those promises into “File 13” the proverbial trash bin.
Fiona Macdermid, White Rock