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Sewer scenarios too costly
Letter to the Sooke News Mirror, March 7, 2001
By JD Hatherly
Before our mayor and council sweep us into an era of debt, let's take a quick look at the numbers that were floated regarding the installation of a sewage system in last week's Mirror.
The cost for installing a sewage system in Sooke is estimated at $16.4 million. There are 610 parcels that will be able to hook up to the sewage system. It is unclear whether only these 610 property owners will pay for the sewage system or if the cost will be borne by all 3,996 property owners in the district.
Let's say for the moment that only the users will pay for the system. Using the published figures, the average cost will be approximately $27,000 per household. These are only the construction costs, and do not include maintenance or land acquisition costs. If we were to amortize the $16,400,000 at seven percent over 20 years, the cost to each user will be $208 per month, or almost $2,500 per year.
The other scenario is that the sewer costs would be shared by all 3,996 ratepayers in the Sooke Municipality. In this scenario, the average annual tax hike would be almons $400 per household. However, in this scenario there will be over 3,200 households paying for a sewage service which they could not use.
Clearly, we're looking at the mother of all tax hikes, and what is the public approval process to be? The mayor and council have opted to use an outdated petition system. A "petition against a borrowing bylaw" has never been used in this community. Who understands it? Who even heard of it before last week? This proposed tax increase requires an up-front public approval process. A referendum would meet this criteria.
Whether one believes a sewage outfall is an evil thing or not, it is clearly prudent to walk more slowly through this process than our council has done to date. The costs are staggering. Rushing about madly to meet grant submission dates is no way to manage our financial affairs.
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