As was expected, decisions made in city council's marathon July 8, 2013 core services review meeting continued to reverberate through the next year's workplan.
But instead of moving forward, there were a couple of issues on which council backtracked.
At January's first meeting, a trio of councillors - Frank Everitt, Lyn Hall and Murry Krause - indicated that they'd be looking to reduce the degree off-street parking rates were increased.
The previous fall, council had unanimously passed the necessary bylaw changes to increase the rates at city-owned lots and structures to help cover the costs of repairs. In some cases, rates doubled. The councillors' motion was to increase the fees incrementally, by 10 per cent per year, like they had with other user fees during the core review process.
"Double is pretty hard to swallow for folks, so we're looking at something that's more reasonable and I think is the right way to do it," said Everitt, prior to the discussion at council.
What was ultimately decided on, after some contentious debate, was a 2014 increase of 25 per cent and 15 per cent to come in 2015 and 2016.
Through all four readings of the bylaw change, Mayor Shari Green along with councillors Cameron Stolz and Dave Wilbur voted against the changes.
"While we've got councillors expressing concern that people were paying too big a bill, they're actually going to be paying a bigger bill by the end of 2016 than had we left it alone," Green said, while Wilbur remarked the plan was "half-baked."
"This wasn't done on the fly. It wasn't half baked," said Hall, before the plan passed third reading in March. "It was something that we thought long and hard about."
The rejigged rates came into effect May 1.
After getting a taste of the rollback, Coun. Everitt brought back a second core review decision in the spring, this time looking to change a new business licence fee for residential rental properties.
"There was just too much stuff pushed through on [July 8, 2013] and this is what happens when we push stuff through too quickly without the due diligence around it," he said.
The fee had come into effect Jan. 1 and charged $155 for previously unlicenced rentals in "any building or portion of any building with one or more dwelling units rented for residential purposes, including secondary suites and duplexes.
While his original idea was to consider alternatives, when it came to the council table in April, Everitt proposed striking the fee from the books altogether.
"We're asking staff to do some work on an unworkable bylaw," Everitt said, before his motion was supported in a narrow 5-4 vote.
Those in favour of keeping the fee - Green, Stolz, Wilbur and Albert Koehler - argued it was a necessary tool to help provide safe places to live by having a mechanism through which a landlord could lose the ability to operate a rental business for a substandard property.
Throughout the process, residents saw a form of this in action in April when council suspended the business licence for the Willows Inn (formerly the Ranch Motel and Homeland Inn). The year-long suspension came on the heels of around 250 visits by the RCMP to the property since owner Phil Danyluk purchased the property in 2011, along with a major fire and breaches of bylaws.
But those who supported scrapping the licence for low-density residential rentals didn't believe it would be as effective and was merely taxing the good landlords.
"Imposing a business licence fee like this promises staff a tool that can shut down bad landlords, but I don't believe that promise," said Coun. Garth Frizzell. "Simply put, it's a tool that's unlikely ever to be used anymore than the current systems are."
By the time the bylaw was finally repealed in July, the city had collected more than $180,000 from landlords that had to be refunded.
