The Editor,
So now that the shock of paying my Coquitlam property taxes has faded a bit, I decided to do some digging on how much taxes have increased since I first moved to this fine city.
In 1996, the year before we purchased our modest split-level home, the property taxes were $1,676, not including utilities. Ten years later, in 2005, we had only experienced a modest increase in our property taxes to $1,877 a year.
Twenty dollars a year increase for 10 years seemed reasonable, especially since Coquitlam had made many improvements, including widening roads, building a new city hall, fire halls, police station, library and expansive facilities at Town Centre Park. I felt like I was getting good bang for my buck.
In the last decade, however, something has changed. Our most recent property tax bill was $2,877. This is a $1,000 increase, or $100 a year for the last 10 years.
Over the same period, our city utility bill increased from $412 a year to $874 — a 112% increase. Our household income certainly didn’t increase by 112%. How does city council think increases like this are sustainable?
And what have I received in return for this increase? Not much.
We failed as a city to generate any business or opportunities from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics — we couldn’t even get our “celebration square” built in time for the event.
Road work is done around the city only to be redone a couple of years later because planning has changed. In the past couple of years in my neighbourhood alone, I have seen too many stupid make-work projects.
As I type this, the city is spending good money to repave our road. Exactly 15 homes are on the section of road it is repaving, and except for a few cracks in the blacktop, the road was perfectly drivable.
A few weeks ago, the city planted approximately 20 trees on our boulevard. Sounds nice, right? Except they have been planted two feet in front of a forest greenbelt. Was this really necessary?
And then there are the bloated salaries at city hall. Far too many city managers are earning six-figure salaries but what are the taxpayers getting in return for their high salaries?
Municipalities across the region need to do some serious belt-tightening and start being more responsible with our money. They need to look at ways of becoming more efficient and they need to ensure that they are spending money only on “needs” and not “nice-to-haves.”
Racquel Foran, Coquitlam
