I regret that I have been unable to maintain my blog for some time.  I have joined the ranks of Nanaimoites with the lurgy and I am only recently back together enough to be coherent again.  At least I think it is coherent. 

As you are aware we have a Council meeting on Monday.  This will be the last kick at the can for the 2009 budget/2009-2013 financial plan.  I still find it incomprehensible that our taxes are to be increased by two times the increase in the cost of living in 2009 and continuing through 2013 a pattern of tax increases set during far different times. 

When the Vancouver Sun headlines run:

·        B.C. consumer bankruptcies, proposals up almost 50 per cent

·        Fresh food price spike props up declining inflation rate

·        Inflation slows despite higher food, shelter costs

·        Canadians' wealth to plunge 3.5%


It appears unseemly for taxpayers to be taken to the cleaners by both sides of the equation.  Let us hope that those elected to represent uswill show some spirit in defending taxpayers from those who would like to continue padding their slush funds despite major economic changes.

 


Comments

Brian

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:22:03

I recall that last year Jerry Berry warned city council that the city simply could not afford to continue development sprawl, yet council continues to approve new projects like Cable Bay, Sandstone and continued sprawl in south Nanaimo.
Even though the developer bears much of the infrastructure initial cost, the tax payers inherit the maintenence costs of all that infrastructure.
Furthermore the city has focused on making Nanaimo a retirement community, paying little attention to attracting sustainable industries that can carry an equal share of the tax burden.

 

Ron Bolin

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:19:18

Hi Brian: Your memory serves you well. It is remarkable that Staff proposes and Council approves such huge projects with no financial projections whatsoever. We seem to just fly by the seat of Mr. Berry's pants.

And I agree that settling on Nanaimo as a retirement community in the financial environment which seems to be descending upon us is madness. All those retirement dollars are themselves retiring. I don't think our children are going to support us in our old age in the style of our dreams. At the City of Nanaimo we continue living yesterday.

 

James

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:35:20

"Staff proposes and Council approves such huge projects with no financial projections whatsoever" - Ron Bolin

Again you are misleading or uninformed, not sure which?
There have been many financial projections on most of Nanaimo's larger projects. Sandstone has an independent report done on their projections, Cable Bay as well. Both were done by an outside party that the City contracts out at times. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent on these reports with many consultants and studies coming into play.

To say "no financial projections whatsoever" is a completely wrong. Making statements like that only hurt your credibility and chance in 2011.

 

Ron Bolin

Tue, 12 May 2009 13:06:07

I am sure that, just as was the case with the conference centre, projections have been done for other large projects such as Sandstone and Cable Bay. The question is: How accurate where those projections? Did the projections for Woodgrove take into account the decimation of downtown? Were the projections done by the Mainstreet group back in 2003-4 which stated that Nanaimo needed a lot more work downtown before a conference centre would be feasible heeded? Did the statement by the consultant whose firm prepared the City of Nanaimo Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines in 2008 that no successful downtown renovation had ever taken place while large new projects were under way on the periphery of the city have any traction with the city in their promotions of Sandstone and Cable Bay?

When I rail against the absence of independent "projections", I am railing against the absence of any independent risk analysis of these projects. Development has very high costs for citizens in both the short and long terms. Projections done for the purposes of a developer do not take these risks into account, nor should they be expected to. There is a long distance between a dream and a projection, even though they lie along the same line.

If you are really interested in this topic, you might want to read Appendices (B.) Observations on the Nanaimo Convention Centre-Hotel Proposal, by Robert Bish; and (C.) New Nanaimo Centre Project: Risk Assessment, by Robert de Leeuw; in Nanaimo between Past and Present, Eric Ricker (Ed.), Nanaimo, 2005. Both these articles are by outstanding professionals in their fields.

If I had not sufficiently defined my use of the term "projections" clearly enough, please excuse me. If I still have not met that bar, let me know.

 



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