Water board budget not soaking area taxpayers

Vernon Morning Star November 09, 2010 7:00 PM
 An increase of 4.6 per cent in the $3.73 million Okanagan Basin Water Board budget won’t mean taxpayers will have to pay more because assessments have increased in the past year in the valley.
The biggest increase for the coming year is in accounting and auditing services, which are provided by the Central Okanagan Regional District on a cost-recovery basis. Previously, the North Okanagan Regional District provided those services.  Executive director Anna Warwick Sears said she is satisfied the increase is reasonable, because there’s been an update of services and items are being tracked more carefully in the new system.  It jumped from $30,000 to $75,000 for the year.

In the provisional budget, the overall requisition this year from taxpayers is six cents per $1,000 of assessed property values, unchanged from the previous two years. Of that, 3.5 cents per $1,000 assessment goes to the board’s sewage facilities grant program, while nine cents goes to the water milfoil program.  A further 1.6 cents goes to water management, including drought management, ground water, water pricing, water education, the water supply and demand project and funding to host a water science conference in Osoyoos next year.  Matching grants from senior government are expected to add to the funding available for many projects.  An addition to the budget this year goes to fund a new UBC Okanagan Water Research Chair, a commitment which was already approved for five years by each of the three regional districts which make up the OBWB.  It’s $100,000 a year, beginning next budget year and is equivalent to 0.2 cents for $1,000 of assessed value. Board members also discussed increasing an item in the budget for looking into management of groundwater in the valley, but in the end, it was decided if more funding is needed, it could be drawn from other areas of the budget, or from grants.Ted van der Gulick from the agriculture ministry noted it’s likely the province would look for leadership from the local community in moving groundwater regulations along. A vote on the budget will be taken at the next board meeting in December.