More Special Meetings upcoming ??

UBCM is coming up Sept 24-28 and registration for delegates to UBCM are being accepted now. UBCM RATES Convention Brochure

However there is a higher rate the longer you wait. Applications received:

• by Aug 10 will cost $375 for Registration as UBCM Member
• Aug 13-Aug 31 $485
• Sept 1-14 $560
• All other additional workshops have the same 30% and 15% additional charges the longer you wait.

The Vernon Council has yet to announce how many people will be going and who will be going unless this was done at a dark side meeting. As registrants must be named on application form will this require a special meeting to authorize the proper expenditure at the lowest rate saving $110+ per attendee?

Vernon City Council is not scheduled to meet until Aug 13 which will be too late to save the taxpayer money for UBCM and too early to announce the results of the counter petition opportunity which will close 2 days later. The decision if the counter petition opportunity garners more than the required signatures surely will not wait for the scheduled Aug 27 meeting or will it?

DRAFT THE BULLDOG:Since Coun. Beardsell championed two of the resolutions that Vernon forwarded to UBCM and he is the most capable of debating the merits of these important matters than it is imperative that Council name him as one of Vernon's UBCM delegates. The council passed these unanimously and is important that our delegation can properly lobby for passage. The editor of the local paper said it best in an Editorial on June 13: "Speaking of Beardsell, he’s on the hot list this week for proposing to push the issue of hospital funding to the next Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting. Often a critic of the group, Beardsell appears to have found a good avenue to raise the contentious issue. Beardsell should consider attending the gathering to really drive the issue home."

The Two resolutions are:

HOSPITAL CAPITAL COST FINANCING : THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Provincial Government assume 100% responsibility of capital hospital expenditures for all municipalities in British Columbia and eliminate the hospital property tax imposed on taxpayers outside the Greater Vancouver Regional District area.
BUSINESS TAX EXEMPTION : THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Provincial Government review the Business Class exemption for Class 6 assessments and consider a significant increase in the statutory property exemption, in order to provide small businesses, in the Province of British Columbia, a fair exemption for their increased assessed property value.