Dear Editor:
Rick Joncas’s letter to the Review seemed to indicate that my recent letter to the editor concerning the use of property tax money to fix some of the roads in our town had some errors.
I generally try to use information that is printed rather than that which is speculated.
Here are the facts as presented by the District of Summerland comparing the income and expenses of our residential taxes:
· 54 per cent of our property tax goes to the Summerland Municipality
· 29 per cent of the 54 per cent is spent on roads, sidewalks and drainage
· 20 per cent, the next highest expenditure, is on recreation, parks and cultural facilities
· Policing in Summerland is our third highest expense at 17 per cent
In other words, if your home is worth $500,000 and you can’t claim the homeowner’s grant, you would be paying about $2,500 in taxes, $392 of which would go towards road repair or new roads.
Since we have yet to adopt the Swiss system of voting on all items facing council, we are at the whim of those people in town who have the most pull, and a council that is depended on the vote of the residents that get out and push council in one or another direction. So we can’t speculate on “what might have been” had we decided to allow truckloads of garbage to come through town on our main thoroughfares or whether it would have been nice to have a seven-storey development in lower town.
But what we can do is to insist that the money spent on our roads is practical, necessary, and done with expertise.
Frank Martens
Summerland