Pay your property taxes day is the time I like to review city expenditures to find out what I am getting for my tax dollars. With city taxes the only options I seem to have are to pay or move.
On top of city taxes I also have to pay user fees like my last trip to the Vanway transfer station which cost $6.
Shouldn't it cost $6 to dump garbage no matter what part of the city you live in, or perhaps if we all had to pay, the fee could drop back to $2. On top of that, according to city council, the Foothills land fill accepted more than 100,000 loads under 500 kgs at the land fill for free last year. To add insult to injury, if I lived outside city limits and in regional district I would get a swipe card and could dump at Vanway for free up to 50 times a year.
The Regional District manages the Foothills landfill and the city pays a tipping fee to dump the garbage collected by the city. Why does the city not own and operate its own dump.
When I look at www.rdffg.bc.ca I find a report from January 2010 committee meeting that states, there is a shortfall in revenue to the regional district for a number of reasons including less garbage coming from city taxpayers to the landfill. It seem less garbage has been buried at the Foothills land fill every year since 2007. The phenomenon of less garbage contributes to a revenue shortfall at the regional district. How can our city councilors that sit at the regional district vote in favour of increasing tipping fees to the city to cover revenue shortfall to the regional district and then vote at city council in favour of increasing utility rates to cover the costs as a result of that previous vote? If taxpayers are sending less garbage to the landfill they should be paying less. There is something rotten in this garbage can for sure.
Somehow I thought if I recycled and sent less garbage to the landfill I was doing my part not only for the environment but to also keep taxes affordable. Apparently not in P.G. anyway. Perhaps the only option other than to wait to the next civic election is to find a more fuel efficient vehicle to get my garbage to the "free" Foothills land fill.
Lee Thomson
Prince George
