Why are we paying more in municipal taxes, fees and levies? Are we getting value for our money?
Labour costs account for 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the City of Victoria’s operating costs. What is shocking is that staffing has increased by 68 per cent, from 868 in 2019 to 1,460 in 2024. When considering higher wages, benefits and pensions, the average cost per employee rose by roughly 25 per cent in the same period. Inflation for this period is estimated to be 19 per cent to 21 per cent, based on the consumer price index for the Greater Victoria region.
Are we getting more or better services? It’s hard to imagine that transportation has improved when you sit in endless traffic jams. Repair projects that used to take days or weeks now take weeks, months or, in the case of Blanshard Street, years. Forty-eight per cent of downtown businesses said they would not renew their leases, due to deteriorating conditions.
Are staff serving more citizens? Population growth for Victoria proper has been a modest 7.4 per cent over the past five years. Out-migration is increasing, and businesses are voting with their feet by leaving. Retail vacancy has jumped to 11 per cent.
Who is paying for this largesse? Citizens pay through taxes and fees. Property taxes have increased 35 per cent since 2019. Residential taxpayers are paying $1,100 to $ 1,300 more.
Homebuyers and renters, not developers, will bear the brunt of the City of Victoria’s 258 per cent increase in the development cost charges for single-family homes.
Then there are the non-tax revenues — user fees, service charges and funds from other levels of government. You are paying 30 to 35 per cent more for non-tax revenues over the five years.
Vancouver council recently approved a 3.9 per cent increase, additional funding for policing and a $22-million reduction in spending through efficiency measures.
In Victoria, we are paying more and getting less.
George Barnhart
Grumpy Taxpayers of Greater Victoria
Three seemingly unrelated stories in theTimes Colonistabout health-care funding decisions demonstrate the difficult choices that must be made when allocating limited resources.
First, the gut-wrenching series of stories about the decision to end provincial funding for the treatment of nine-year-old Charleigh Pollock’s rare disorder, Batten disease, demonstrates the challenge of weighing the scientific evidence of drug efficacy against the very emotional reactions to ending her treatment.
Setting aside the high cost of virtually all rare-disease treatments, the key question is whether the drug Brineura makes any difference to her quality of life and life expectancy.
While a leading researcher in Batten disease, Dr. Ineka Whiteman, disagrees with the recommendation of the advisory panel of experts to stop treatment, she also knows that the life expectancy of someone with this disorder is 10-12 years.
Her argument appears to be based on her belief that more could be learned about the disease by continuing treatment, not that it will alter the inevitable and tragic trajectory of Charleigh’s decline.
The second story is about the potentially transformational research into immunotherapy treatment for cancer going on at the B.C. Cancer Agency, and the funding of the Lynda and Murray Farmer Immunotherapy Chair.
As with all ground-breaking medical research, the costs associated with developing novel therapies is often measured in billions of dollars, and the chances of success unknown.
Nonetheless, without taking risks and investing in emerging therapies, the potential for helping millions of people would not be realized.
The final story is about the global reduction in expenditures on treating preventable diseases such as measles, TB and polio.
In this case, the cost of preventive treatment is low and the positive outcomes are all but guaranteed.
While it is easy to criticize health policy decision-makers, ask yourself how you would allocate funding between high-cost treatments known to have poor outcomes, high-cost treatments with unknown but potentially positive outcomes and low-cost treatments with known positive outcomes?
Clearly, people with diseases in all three categories deserve a reasonable level of health care, but these choices demonstrate that the allocation of limited resources is anything but straightforward.
Dr. Howard Brunt
North Saanich
Re: “Vienna shows the way in affordable housing,” letter, June 27.
Like Vienna, at one time Canada had lots of rent-to-income housing and it worked well. Not only was there virtually no homelessness, but because rents were a percentage of your income, those who achieved financial success moved out when market rents became more attractive. This freed up units for lower income new arrivals.
Unfortunately, in an effort to cut taxes, politicians saw this housing stock as a windfall source of funds. On the one hand, rent-to-income housing required tax dollars to build, maintain and administer. On the other hand, selling off this housing stock provided a huge income stream and made all the costs go away.
Naturally, “low tax” Conservative politicians took advantage of this economic slight-of-hand and rent-to-income housing in Canada largely disappeared. Margaret Thatcher did the same in the U.K. with similar disastrous results.
Unfortunately, once it is lost, rent-to-income housing is very difficult and expensive to recreate in a high-cost housing environment.
At the same time, the payback in reduced health, policing and social service costs takes a long time to develop and is difficult to measure.
However, the need for rent-to-income housing is obvious, and doing nothing is heartbreaking for both those with housing insecurity and society as a whole.
Canada solved this problem once. All we need is the political courage and humanity to do it again.
S. I. Petersen (A rent-to-income beneficiary years ago)
Nanaimo
What does it say about our fragile world order now that NATO countries have committed to a spending target of up to five per cent of GDP by 2035? Will the “doomsday clock” move closer to midnight in the coming years? Some reports suggest in 2024, the clock advanced closer to the doomsday scenario, now set at 89 seconds from midnight.
Many years ago, I was naive enough to think that the less a country spends on military budgets, maybe our world was slowly becoming a kinder and safer space. The unwavering reality of Russian hostility along with new American aggression, generations-old Middle East conflicts and North Korean insanity has sent us back to the Cold War era of the 1950s.
I thought about adding China to the aforementioned countries but I believe they are too smart and more interested in economic dominion than bringing the world to the end of days. Looks like China (sorry, America) will become Canada’s stable trading partner while the orange man is in the White House.
As we look ahead, while focusing on making Canada an economic powerhouse through the use of our natural resources, our country’s newfound prosperity will be spent on the expansion of the Department of Defence for more personnel, stealth planes, helicopters, war ships, leak-proof submarines and drones. In the near future, to meet our burgeoning military staffing requirements, will we have to review our “immigration policies” once again to fill all the anticipated vacancies?
Steve Hertling
Qualicum Beach
I thank Victoria’s Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan panel members for their dedication and commitment to our city.
I have read all 79 pages of the report and reviewed the 400-plus pages of the appendices.
I was surprised to learn on page 21 that recommendations were not authored by the panel nor endorsed by them.
Coun. Marg Gardiner is correct in her recent op-ed. The report does not acknowledge that the disorder on our streets and the decline of downtown is the result of the city’s failure to come to grips with illegal drug use.
As Julian Daly, panel member, has stated, the “Pandora Problem” is not a housing issue, it’s a drug issue. This “plan” will have no impact on the disorder on our streets or the looming economic collapse of central Victoria and ensuing loss of city tax revenue.
Cutting through the verbiage of the first 49 pages of the report and the doublespeak of the endless appendices, the plan has three actions.
First, create a new level of bureaucracy in City Hall with an office of community safety and wellbeing reporting to the city manager.
Second, have city bureaucrats tell council six months from now how big an increase they believe Victoria property taxpayers (business and residential) will accept in an election year.
Third, accept no responsibility for the state of downtown and put all the blame on the province. But demand that the cash-strapped provincial government that is running an $11-billion deficit and is $156-billion in debt hand over tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, no strings attached, so that Victoria council can continue their profligate spending of our money on buying defunct jazz clubs, restaurants and cinemas, and building spray parks.
It is incredible that the “plan” relies on a 124-page report (appendix C) from Muflehun, a company from Washington, D.C., that parrots the U.S. values of liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness (page 14) with no acknowledgement of the Canadian constitutionally enshrined requirements of peace, order and good government.
It also relies on the 292-page “analysis” by Helpseeker.org. Helpseeker is very opaque but seems to retail from Calgary. Long-term NDP minister Mike Farnworth has called their reports “sensationalized” and “misleading.”
Why did Mayor Marianne Alto and council apart from Gardiner endorse this plan? Did they even read it?
Alan Humphries, PhD, P.Eng (retired)
Victoria
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