Capital region taxpayers in seven municipalities have been forking over for too long for a sewage-treatment plant deep-sixed last year, say two mayors unhappy with the situation.
Residents should no longer be charged on their municipal taxes or water bills for a hypothetical project, say Langford Mayor Stew Young and Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins.
The bills amount to about $70 for an average Langford household annually, but Desjardins said it could reach thousands a year for a business.
Langford has written a letter to the Capital Regional District, to be discussed on May 13, asking that the tax be stopped for this year and future years until treatment locations and costs are known and the public has been consulted.
As of this year, the total collected since 2012 will have reached about $30 million, said Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen, CRD board chairman, who noted the CRD’s budget passed at the end of March without opposition to the requisitions being raised.
Jensen favours collecting in advance to soften the blow when wastewater treatment finally kicks in, and said the Craigflower Pump Station in View Royal, due for completion this year, will cost $25 million and had to be built regardless. He said he has yet to hear any Oak Bay residents protest about the advance fee.
But Desjardins said many residents likely haven’t detected how much it is. In Esquimalt, it’s built into an overall CRD contribution, while in Victoria, it’s in water bills; in Oak Bay, it’s a fixed fee, and in Langford it’s on the municipal property tax bill.
“We can certainly revisit it for 2016,” Jensen said.
But Young said he’s frustrated that $65 million was spent on studying and planning the proposed McLoughlin Point site in Esquimalt. He said the site was too small, and assumptions were made that even if Esquimalt rejected the rezoning, the province would override the municipality. Esquimalt rejected the rezoning in April 2014 and the province declined to overturn the vote.
“This has been such a fiasco,” Young said. “Now McLoughlin is dead, but they’re still charging for something that’s not going to happen.”
Municipalities are now considering separate west-side and east-side options, the former for Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood, Langford and the Songhees First Nation, and the latter for Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay. The groups hope to have a list of viable options by the end of June.
Desjardins said there is a possibility the cost will actually be less than proposed for McLoughlin.
Young said he doesn’t believe taxpayers should have to pay for something that hasn’t been settled on when there is no established price tag. “Stop it until there is a completed process.” Taking tax dollars in advance sends “the wrong message,” he said.
The CRD’s sewage treatment project has a budget of $788 million, toward which the federal government has committed $253 million. To preserve that funding, a plan and site need to be approved by March 2016, Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps has said, while the site needs to be selected and zoning completed by December of this year.
