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Residents in Sooke are concerned about the imminent tax hikes to pay for the new sewer system. |
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Calendar of Events & special Dates |
Learn from other Communities who did thisI can’t take it any longer. Less than 10 years ago I went though virtually the same sewer process now unfolding here in the small bedroom community of Queensborough in New Westminster. City council decided a sewage distribution system was required. The experts were brought in to sell the goods to the community. A liquid waste management study to assess the need for a sewage system was forgone as being too costly and time consuming. A referendum was promised but not delivered upon. A neat packaged system presented to those of the public interested enough to attend, endorsed fully by council and hired experts as being the best solution according to studies which supposedly existed but nobody saw. The results were that in less than 18 months a shiny new sewer system was in place; and the cost to the taxpayers was compulsory hook-up within one year, a mandatory requirement to deactivate (fill-in or dig-up) the old system, plumbing expenses of running pipe from house to distribution line, fixed and low income families and pensioners forced to sell and move away due to higher taxes, a divided community over-run by developers falling over themselves to buy up cheap, newly subdivided parcels of land. The average financial cost up front to a home owner with a 60x140 foot lot, about $5,000 plus yearly sewer taxes. The spiritual costs to a fractured community and families, who knows. My point is that no one who really cares about their community can afford to sit idly by and ignore the lies and propaganda coming from the city council on an issue as important as this. There must be due public process with real public input, not some snow-job in the local paper in the form of a four-part ad to promote their agenda and meet a mid-March deadline. City council must be fully accountable for this process. That is part of being elected to office by the people in a democracy. |
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