Osoyoos and area residents are going to have to get used to increases on their tax bills now that they’re on the hook for paying a much larger chunk of the policing costs in this community.
Town of Osoyoos council tentatively approved its 2018 budget last week and it calls for a 2.93 per cent increase in property taxes.
It also calls, as has become the norm, a very slight increase in user fees to pay for water and sewer services.
At the end of the day, a house assessed at just over $400,000 in Osoyoos will have to pay just over $1,600 in property taxes and user fees, which is an increase of about $130 a year or $11 per month.
When you compare that to other municipalities of similar size in British Columbia, Osoyoos and area residents don’t have much to complain about as our property taxes remain amongst the lowest in the province.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is future councils are not going to have much choice but to raise taxes by an average of three to four per cent each and every year.
And a large percentage of those taxes will have to go to pay for the almost $600,000 annual increase – from roughly $385,000 to close to $970,000 – to pay for policing costs.
This massive increase kicked in back in early 2017 after the latest Canadian census indicated that Osoyoos’ population had exceeded 5,000 residents.
Under an arbitrary provincial statute which basically downloads policing costs onto smaller towns across this province, taxpayers in towns like Osoyoos are forced to pay a whopping annual bill simply because a few more people moved to town.
The cost breakdown to pay for policing costs has switched from local taxpayers being on the hook for 30 per cent of costs when our population was officially under 5,000 to 70 per cent.
As mentioned above, that’s a whopping $600,000 annual hit, which is obviously significant and unfair for communities of this size.
Down the road in Oliver, taxpayers in that community are looking at a proposed nine per cent tax increase as council there has realized the massive impact policing costs will have on their community when the next census will most assuredly indicate that town’s population has exceeded 5,000 residents.
The province’s decision many years ago to pick an arbitrary number like 5,000 residents and then download hundreds of thousands of dollars in policing costs on those communities remains grossly unfair.
But the provincial government hasn’t shown any inclination to change this policy and that means Osoyoos taxpayers are going to be hit – and hit hard – in the pocketbook for many years to come.
There are some services that can be reduced in a town like Osoyoos when council and staff are putting together their annual budget, but cutting policing costs certainly isn’t one that any member of council or any member of this community wants to look at and rightfully so.
Osoyoos is a crazy busy tourist town from May until the end of September and the RCMP officers employed at the Osoyoos detachment are kept incredibly busy.
There has also been an increase in overall property crime over the past several years, so it’s clear we need more officers, not less.
Kudos to the current council for doing everything in their power to keep the latest tax increase to a reasonable level.
It’s sad but true that local taxpayers can expect more of the same in the coming years because of a silly system that taxes residents of small towns very unfairly to pay for policing costs.
Perhaps the time has come for mayors and council across British Columbia to form an organized coalition demanding that the provincial government get rid of this unfair funding formula to pay for policing costs.
The fact a town with a population of 4,999 can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a community with a population of 5,001 is simply unfair and harshly punitive for residents in towns like Osoyoos.
