Details of the Library Contest Costs can be found at Agenda Package - 12.7MB P.285 -295
According to a March 28 memo from the CFO K. Bertles to council the total costs for the Counter Petition and the Referendum process were $373,538.31 of which the Okanagan Regional Library will pay $110,000 which will leave an outstanding cost to the City Taxpayers of $263,538.31. Most of this has already been taxed in 2007 and the balance for 2008 appears to be $37,063.62.
Most of the money is attributed to professional fees for Architects etc. $280,219.08 for the Referendum procedure and $24,381.00 for the Counter Petition process. The public Relations advertising campaign absorbed $22,654.03 in the Referendum and $5,307.07 for the counter petition campaign. $20,861.19 was the amount of this part of the costs that went to Black Press with only a total of $5,442 going to our two local radio stations.
2 comments:
Wow, thats a lot of money. I guess it will cost the City a lot more to try to pull the wool over the eyes of its citizens in the future. Too bad if they refuse to learn this lesson and keep listening to their so-called staff experts appallingly bad advice. Forgive me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that the total represents 2.59% of the 2008 budget. With an increase of 2.26% in the budget, then 0.33% or $33,536.58 gets eaten up. That basically means that the entire budget increase in 2008 is going to pay for a failed initiative plus the fact that there's a further $33,526.58 cut to basic services next year. Wonder how much the Mayor is spending on forwarding his agenda of annexation of Electoral Areas B and C. Wonder what basic service is being offset by that money. Seems like this Council are more concerned about their little pet projects that the majority don't want and which will cost the taxpayers money out of pocket to forward, then actually doing the job of providing basic service to the City residents. Hmmmmm, how many months to November?
Just correcting some figure from previous comment.
Actually only $37,063 is for 2008. The taxpayer absorbed most of the increase last year. It reduced the surplus in effect. A 1% increase =$160,000 approximately for 2008.
If this was all for 2008 then it would be a 263,538/160,000 = 1.64% increase.
Nevertheless it is one hell of a lot of money for a roll of the dice.
If they would have quit after counter petition total costs would only have been only about $29,000.
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