CVRD spending needs accountability
Once again the CVRD has significantly raised taxes by six per cent and spending by $4 million with little or no benefit to the Cowichan Valley.
The tax increase this year is three times the rate of inflation and now we have more employees, more spending up to $90 million and more taxes — it’s the culture at the CVRD. Not once have the elected directors ever reined in CVRD spending or cut costs or taxes. They simply rubber stamp staff and special interest wish lists.
High taxes fit right in with the anti-business attitude in the CVRD — why would any new business set up shop in such a hostile place to small and large businesses?
In the yellow insert that arrived with our tax bill this week the CVRD hides and confuses the real reason for tax increases by mixing the property assessment process with their excessive spending by function. The reality is the new spending goes mostly right into the pockets of the directors, their hundreds of employees, lawyers and grants to third parties.
For Cobble Hill taxpayers, financing the goofy ideas of director Matteus Clement has raised everyone’s taxes here by over $100 — a whopping 350 per cent increase this year in unaccountable grants for his friends. He continues to waste our money by hiring high paid consultants to re-do plans that were just fine for our community. If he lived in the community he would understand that.
The CVRD wastes close to a million dollars a year on so-called economic development with nothing to show for it — not one local job created other than the new head bureaucrat. The main reason is no one holds these high-paid managers responsible for the millions of tax dollars they spend each year.
Simply showing up for work seems to be the main CVRD performance measure for many. The recent appalling results of independent audits on local water and sewer systems in the Valley confirms these guys are asleep at their desks.
Taxpayers are also fed up getting ripped off by unethical spending like the three directors who took their usual monthly pay and expenses while they campaigned in the recent B.C. election and did little or no work for the CVRD.
We need some real accountability and spending controls at the CVRD.
W.E. (Bill) Dumont
Cobble Hill