When is enough – enough? – Participate In Democracy

White Rock News of the Day

Topic: Finance

July 14, 2023

When is enough - enough?

On June 26, 2023, the newly elected Mayor and Council for the City of White Rock approved the 81 Million Dollar Financial Plan for 2023.

The final 198 page document, includes a property tax increase of $2,438,000 dollars. The 5 year plan also approves a total increase in our property taxes of $9,227,000 dollars by 2027! (Page 198 – Final Financial plan – June 23, 2023)

On February 13, 2023, the newly elected Mayor and Council, in a 5 – 2 vote, decided to forego an opportunity to host a series of public meetings that would have provided a detailed review of the financial plan. As a newly elected council one might have expected a deeper analysis of the financial details.

A close inspection could have included a review of the 181 staff positions paying in excess of 1.8 million per month. This analysis could have been enlightening and perhaps led to some cost efficiencies being revealed.

For a new Mayor and City Council to not take advantage of the opportunity to review in detail the financial plan associated with a 2.4 million dollar or 6.59% increase in our taxes is baffling.

As a direct result of this decision, we have no insight to why city staff decided to recommend increasing our taxes to pay for their budget priorities. Instead, City Council simply accepted that the tax payers would be required to pay for the recommendations that City Staff made.

The City of White Rock as of December 31, 2022 had 154 million dollars in Cash and Cash Equivalents in the financial coffers of our community. Up from 131 million at December 31, 2021.

It is our belief that the community needs more input to the budgeting process. Future contributions on this topic will focus on promoting a participatory budgeting process that will facilitate a detailed analysis of the current financial cash position of our City with the goal of securing a 0% increase in property taxes in 2024.

Please provide your comments to this article to demonstrate your interest is achieving this goal. We encourage dialogue so whether you support this initiative or not, we would like to hear from you.

Now is the time to engage in Participatory Democracy. The result of a robust response to this initiative will send a strong message from us “White Rockers” to our elected officials that we wish to be heard.

A strong response to will go a long way to proving that we have a vibrant democracy functioning in White Rock.