By Jason Luciw - Kelowna Capital News Published: March 21, 2009
Ganging up on a bureaucrat to get answers about the regional district’s spending habits was a new low for West Kelowna council. Tuesday afternoon’s session came across as nothing more than a dog and pony show staged to make council appear responsible against a backdrop of seemingly irrational regional district spending. Yes, West Kelowna council and staff deserve credit for going over the municipal budget with a fine-tooth comb and trying to hold its own tax hikes to between two and five per cent. Yes, a 16 per cent tax increase for regional services in 2009 is excessive. However, next time council ought to seek out the proper target.
The bureaucrat in question, regional district chief administrator Harold Reay, is the proverbial shot messenger in this story. “These are the directions we as staff have received from the regional board,” Reay aptly attempted to tell council this week. Unfortunately, his defense was quickly drowned out by a barrage of further questions and comments from council. The comment that best gets to the point of council’s whole painful exercise, that is laying blame elsewhere, was one made by Coun. Rosalind Neis. Neis said she wanted the regional district’s phone number clearly displayed on West Kelowna tax notices so residents knew who to complain to about the outrageous increases. “I hope you’ll have staff in place to fill those calls that I’m sure you’ll be getting,” Neis told Reay. In fact, the cell phone numbers of Neis and Coun. David Knowles, both past board directors, and Mayor Doug Findlater, a present board director, should be the ones to appear on the tax notices, along with board chairman Robert Hobson’s contact information. After all, the two programs which are to blame for the lion’s share of this year’s regional district tax increases—Bus Rapid Transit expansion and a parks acquisition strategy—are political decisions that Neis, Findlater, Knowles and Hobson were party to at various points in the past.
Reay really should have stayed silent, except to point a finger, preferably not the middle one, and say, “Ask them!” In his counter assault, Reay could have also pointed to his counterpart, West Kelowna chief administrator Jason Johnson, who barely budged during the attack. As West Kelowna’s top bureaucrat, Johnson should have explained why his staff was or was not present at the various planning meetings that preceded the board’s budget decisions. The regional district certainly invited municipal staff, Reay explained. It’s not enough to give the pat answer the municipality has become accustomed to using in its own defense: “We didn’t have so-and-so working for us at the time.” If West Kelowna has problems with the regional district’s spending habits now, trying to put a veil of blame on Reay, intentionally or unwittingly, is shameful. Council really should look to its past and present board members for allowing the programs to continue or for letting West Kelowna be part of them, if fundamental opposition exists.
West Kelowna board members also need to sharpen their lobbying skills if they’re ever to convince the other 10 members, most of them from Kelowna, to listen to future reasoning. To West Kelowna council’s credit, it has now directed its own internal process, having staff review what regional district functions the municipality should be a part of going forward. Undoubtedly, it’s too late for West Kelowna to back out of the two expensive programs this year. It may even be on the hook in 2010. In other words, West Kelowna either accepts the consequences of regional board decisions or sharpens its bayonets for the political or legal battle required to bow out of the programs.
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