The polarizing issue of putting taxpayer dollars aside for a rainy day – more commonly recognized as reserve funds – came up for discussion as Town of Osoyoos council and senior administration officially kicked off 2018 budget deliberations last Thursday.

As discussions between the Town and the provincial government continue relating to the full impact of policing costs to the RCMP, Jim Zakall, the Town’s director of financial services, revealed to council the full impact of policing costs on local taxpayers.

As most local residents likely know, municipal taxpayers are now on the hook for close to $600,000 in additional policing costs in 2018 compared to two years ago.

That’s because provincial laws state any municipality that exceeds 5,000 in population must pay 70 per cent of policing costs, as opposed to 30 per cent for those towns and villages under 5,000.

Zakall informed members of council on Thursday that the Town has accumulated just over $317,000 in an RCMP reserve fund to help defray the costs of additional policing costs. With council considering a staff recommendation to add an additional $76,000 into that fund as part of 2018 budget deliberations, Zakall asked them to consider another option of using that money on other capital projects and topping off the RCMP reserve fund with money raised through traffic fines in Osoyoos, which was roughly $17,000 in 2017.

Zakall told council he had contacted numerous other municipalities to gather information on what they do in terms of reserve funds to pay for escalating policing costs.

The City of Penticton has a reserve fund of around $360,000, while Kimberly has a reserve fund of around $260,000 and Peachland’s fund is just over $233,000, he said.

However, Summerland council has opted to not put aside any money into a reserve fund for policing costs and neither has council in Fernie, he said.

After speaking to various municipal financial officers, Zakall said he’s of the opinion that if reserve funds get too high, the provincial government would be less willing to lend financial assistance.

“On the other hand, if the money is spent on other projects, the province may be more open to negotiating,” he said.

Zakall said “he would be comfortable” increasing the RCMP reserve fund to the $400,000 range by continuing to add traffic fine revenue over the next couple of years, but didn’t think huge annual increases was necessarily the best use of local taxpayer dollars.

Coun. C. J. Rhodes said while he understands the reasoning behind developing various reserve funds, he believes they should be limited as they take away from moving forward with much-needed capital projects.

“I’m not a big fan of reserves … sometimes you sacrifice moving forward with other projects,” he said.

Rhodes said he supported Zakall’s proposal to continue topping off the existing RCMP reserve fund with traffic fine revenue and spending the $76,000 earmarked for the fund on other capital projects on the books for 2018. Zakall said if the council of a city the size of Penticton is comfortable with a policing reserve fund of $360,000, the Town of Osoyoos should be equally comfortable with the reserve approaching $320,000.

“It gives us a little bit of comfort providing for unforeseen circumstances,” he said.

Barry Romanko, the Town’s chief financial officer, told council the idea behind reserve funds is to “soften the blow” for local taxpayers in case of an emergency or unforeseen circumstances.

When it was pointed out that it could cost up to or in excess of $1 million should a homicide investigation ever be needed in Osoyoos, it’s cases like this where reserve funding would be needed and necessary, he said.

The City of Penticton has had several murder investigations over the past several years and there’s obviously not enough money in that city’s reserve fund to pay for these investigations, so it’s his opinion there are additional funds from senior levels of government available in special circumstances like this, said Zakall.

At the end of the debate, council voted to adopt the motion to continue topping up the RCMP reserve fund with traffic fine revenue in 2018 and taking the $76,000 set aside for that fund and spend it on capital projects.

KEITH LACEY

Osoyoos Times