Kelowna being shortchanged?

Wayne Moore - Mar 18, 2008 CASTANET

Kelowna City Councillor, Colin Day wants to know why the City may be getting shortchanged through the renewal of the Gas-Tax Revenue agreement with the feds. Day suggested Monday that Kelowna may be getting shafted to the tune of $1 million. "It would appear Kelowna, compared to Kamloops and Prince George is short approximately $1 million," says Day. "If you compare the rationale with Kamloops and Prince George coming under tier one, Kelowna falls right in the middle. Is there any way of correcting that problem?" Kelowna is listed as a tier two City. "I don't know if Kelowna is $1 million short, that's a rather serious concern," says Councillor Robert Hobson, who is also Vice-President of the Union of B.C. Municipalities which administers the gas tax. "I wasn't aware Kelowna was a million dollars short, that's a surprise. I'd be interested to know how the calculations were made." Hobson says the calculations are based on population as he understands it. "I think what Councillor Day is talking about is that we are in a tier that requires a higher portion of the funds to be spent on regionally significant projects than some other communities are. Some may not like to participate in regionally significant projects and prefer more dollars to be spent within their community." Day says he believes the regional rationale was that Kamloops and Prince George had a larger percentage of the population within the region and therefore, were considered a tier one city. "Kelowna falls exactly within the same rationale. The difference is that 75 per cent goes to a tier one city and only 50 per cent to a tier two city. Kelowna residents come up short under that calculation." Council voted to send a letter to the UBCM asking for an explanation on the formula used to determine tier one and tier two cities.

6.2 Establishment of Tiers

To support the distribution of New Deal funds, British Columbia has been divided into three tiers based on differing community characteristics including population density, degree of urbanization, adjacency of communities to urbanized areas and the need for intra-regional infrastructure. Table 1 outlines the percentage of total per capita allocation that will be delivered through the CWF and the SPF.

Community Tier	Applicable Area of BC: Includes both Regional Districts and Municipalities	CWF Proportion of per capita allocation received by a Local Government as a direct entitlement	SPF Proportion of per capita allocation to be pooled
Tier 1	All areas of British Columbia except those areas in Tier 2 and Tier 3	75%	25%
Tier 2	RDOS, CORD, NORD, CRD, CVRD, RDN, FVRD, SLRD*	50%	50%
Tier 3	Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD)	Up to 25%	Up to 100%

*Tier 2 means the following collection of regional districts: Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen, Regional District of Central Okanagan, Regional District of North Okanagan, Capital Regional District, Cowichan Valley Regional District, Regional District of Nanaimo, Fraser Valley Regional District, Squamish Lillooet Regional District.