Road Repair Help From Province Unlikely
Thursday, May 17, 2012 @ 11:11 AM
Prince George, B.C. – The message from the provincial government to B.C. municipalities seems very clear: don’t expect any additional funding from Victoria for things like infrastructure improvements.
Ida Chong, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, today stated (see earlier story) that giving local government a bigger piece of the tax pie could jeopardize crucial services delivered by senior government. She says there’s only one taxpayer. And that same phrase was echoed by Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad on the Meisner program on CFIS-FM this morning. Rustad was asked whether the province might be able to come up with some sort of gas tax revenue-sharing with municipalities to fund road repairs. The MLA says “driving the roads in Prince George I can understand the need for investment in the side road infrastructure. It’s a challenging question because there’s so much infrastructure within communities that need renewal, whether it’s a water system, sewer systems, whether it’s road networks. And so as a province we provide a number of grants, especially for small communities, that are unconditional grants, they’re allowed to spend those on whatever types of projects they want to do. But typically we have not funded for road work and those types of things.”
Rustad says it opens a very challenging door from a taxation perspective for municipalities. “It is municipalities’ responsibility for paying within their own communities, and because they have property taxation rights that becomes the issue. There’s only one taxpayer and how do you share those dollars.”
He continues “wherever the province can step up and try to help municipalities that’s what we have been doing, but we also have to be very careful and cognitive of the fact that if you start blending the responsibilities within communities for various things, the challenge will become if they expect more from the province that does mean they’ll end up charging less in property taxes and then how does that shift end up happening.”
The Nechako Lakes MLA calls it a very complex issue around taxation and around the various arenas that are required. “But I guess the short answer is that there isn’t a method at this particular place to do that. It would signal a very significant shift in terms in what governments have done throughout history.”
At their meeting in Penticton today, 86 B.C. mayors said it’s time for all three levels of government to work together to provide services while at the same time avoiding repetition and duplication in getting those services to the taxpayer.
Comments
“The message from the provincial government to B.C. municipalities seems very clear: donât expect any additional funding from Victoria for things like infrastructure improvements.”
They have handed Dix a plum here, haven’t they?
Like the NDP need anymore help against a government that is in free fall. If ever there were a lame duck in power, these jokers would take the prize.
“The message from the provincial government to B.C. municipalities seems very clear: donât expect any additional funding from Victoria for things like infrastructure improvements.”
The other message is that if you want a provincial government in power that recognizes the downloading of provincial funding responsibilities to municipalities, vote in a party that recognizes that. See how the NDP feels the pending infrastructure replacement dilemma can be solved.
The NDP ignored provincial roads the last time they were in power. Hopefully they don’t continue that trend or our highways will soon be as bad as the roads in town.
Too busy in Vancouver, that’s the actual BC
The Hart Highway is as busy as any road in BC and yet it doesn’t have proper lighting. The Hart has major intersections without so much as a turning lane for big trucks to cut into traffic where you have no shoulder on the road and a skinny road lane constrained by a curb. No where in BC will you find such a substandard highway infrastructure that is provincial responsibility. How do the local politicians get away with it?
That said the single tax payer analogy used by Rustad just goes to show how unqualified he really is for the job.
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