Interim Reserve Policy meeting Friday at 9 AM !

MEETING NOTICE
A Special Committee of the Whole meeting of Council will be held Friday, May 16th, 2008, at 9:00 am in Council Chambers at City Hall to review the Interim Reserve Policy.
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Don Quixote Note: The image on left (click to enlarge) shows the expected position of the reserves at the end of 2008. These are the reserves that will be discussed at the special meeting and the history, purpose and mandated access and policy procedure will be determined. The DCC's reserve, the Land Reserve(s) and the the other statutory reserve (cemetery) do not appear to be on the agenda for this meeting.

Of particular interest to me will be how the following reserves are handled:

• RCMP Reserve - Will they finally formalize this reserve policy (as we had thought they had done 3 years ago) to mandate that all surpluses from the budgeted RCMP Policing Costs MUST be placed into this reserve at year end?
• Airport Reserve: Will the history of how this reserve went from $111,000 at close out of Airport as a separate corporation to $47,322.52 be revealed? In view of the Captain Bailey Way initiative that supposedly will take the tax burden away from the taxpayers and the subsidy will end, is this tag end of a capital reserve necessary? Where should it be transferred?
• Fringe Load Variance Reserve. ($290,000) Now that the true purpose of this reserve was revealed and there still remains a large sum of money in it and as there appears to be no fringe load variance in 2007 as no money was added in or taken our for that purpose maybe it is time to transfer this dubious reserve to a more worthy reserve. It appears that the 22% load figures used must be a valid loading factor and the reserve has become redundant.
• Affordable Housing Reserve: ($550,000) The original purpose of this reserve (set up with $310,000 from RCMP reserve- such money to be returned if Housing reserve is wound up) was to provide grants to offset DCC's for non-profits building affordable housing. The new DCC policy has mandated the treatment of those types of DCC's for non-profits etc and the purpose of this reserve is now moot. Will the money be returned to the RCMP reserve and will the balance be used a new social housing purpose?
• Capital Grant Matching Reserve: $300,000. This money was transferred in when the 2005 operating surplus was sliced and diced and has sat there untouched ever since? What is the purpose of this reserve and is necessary.
• BC Gas Lease Legacy: $1,529,872.74 This is a LILO agreement between the City and Terasen where the City bought the infrastructure (gas lines) and then leases them back to Terasen for them to operate. The revenue Teresen gives to the city each year pays down the capital expenditure we made to purchase the infrastructure. At the end of the deal in 17 years or so there will be a pot of gold of around $12 million that will accrue to the City of Vernon. (Terasen has the option of extending deal and continuing paying us revenue annually but by that time our capital exposure will be paid off.) It will be interesting to see how this reserve is debated and resolved on Friday. Prince George actually is one of the cities that actually dips into these reserves on an annual basis to smooth out tax anomalies. There are few people that understand this Enron type accounting where the rationale was to transfer our lower MFA financing rate and our lack of taxable status to a private corporation and the both of us would make money. I am looking forward to being enlightened on my misconceptions about this deal.
• Sewer Group: How DCC's are collected from Non Vernon taxed development in Coldstream and the financing costs of the sewer plant that should be put into DCC Sewer bylaw will be of interest. A fuller explanation of the $838,683 in the "Un-named" reserve would be of interest to most taxpayers?