A community advisory committee is tackling issues pertaining to City of Powell River’s finances.
At the August 27 finance committee meeting, mayor Dave Formosa, who chairs the advisory committee, said he wanted to provide an update after the second meeting of the committee on August 26.
He said the first meeting in July was quite interesting, where members introduced themselves to each other and discussed what they are trying to achieve. An overview on the terms of reference was provided. Formosa said the committee has a difficult and complicated task ahead.
He said the group also touched on permissive tax exemptions, which are where the city does not collect taxes on qualifying properties, such as places of worship and properties belonging to non-profit societies. He said the issue was presented to the committee so it might try, if city council agrees, to work on examining the issue and coming up with recommendations.
“If council gives us the space, it would allow us the ability to try and come up with a recommendation for them in time to deal with the issue prior to their timelines,” said Formosa. “They all agreed to give it a try.”
Formosa said at the advisory committee’s second meeting, the big issue was permissive tax exemptions and that was “quite fun.”
“When they got into permissive tax exemptions, they realized my goodness, what did we get into?” said Formosa. “We don’t like this, this doesn’t feel good, people might get mad at us. Maybe we had better talk to all these groups and get their opinions.
“We bashed that around and spent the majority of the meeting on permissive tax exemptions. It even got to the point where they were considering they did not want to do this.”
Formosa said at the end of the day, the committee decided it would go through with dealing with permissive tax exemptions, and even if the recommendation is that they make no recommendation, members are concerned about the issue. The committee also came to realize it wasn’t making the decisions: that is council’s responsibility.
“They could start to see the politics of it all and the politics of being a councillor or a mayor,” said Formosa.
Because of the extensive discussion on permissive tax exemptions, two or three agenda items were missed out on at the second meeting, said Formosa. There will be two more meetings where the advisory committee can discuss the matter before it has to provide a recommendation to councillors.
Councillor George Doubt, who is vice-chair of the advisory committee, said committee members jumped right into the deep end.
“They were quite enthusiastic about making a recommendation on permissive tax exemptions,” said Doubt. “As the evening went on there were a lot of really good ideas floating out, but a lot of diversity of opinion as well. People were starting to realize the depth of the questions the committee is being asked to answer.
“They are concerned about the public and I would point out that the community finance advisory committee meetings are open to the public. The committee is discussing issues of importance for all of the taxpayers in town and people might want to come out, see what’s happening and maybe ask a question or two. The committee is interested in public input.”
Doubt said he had confidence the committee could make some kind of recommendation to council on permissive tax exemptions by the end of September.
Community finance advisory committee meetings are held every second Wednesday at the city hall council chambers. The next meeting will be at 7 pm on September 9.
