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Can you afford to pay for sewers?
By George Obriain to the Sooke News Mirror, May 30 2001
Tax bills will soon be arriving through the mail for all Sooke residential property owners and it may be an opportune time to take a close look at the present tax bill structure and amounts.
Normally tax bills are divided into about three distinct totals, the school levy; the regional district tax and municipality of Sooke tax (showing opposite a heading called general tax total); and finally the hospital tax and other levies such as transit, B.C. Assessment etc.
The major portion of your property tax is applied to education, CRD and the municipality. Presently, the B.C. government applies the homeowner’s grant, which is deducted from the basic school levy and only reduced that amount. The remaining taxes then go to the appropriate authorities, and note that the largest amount is to the municipality.
The municipal council has now made a ‘council initiative’ that will be very difficult to reverse if its grant application for a municipal sewer is honoured by the federal and provincial governments.
Now picture this: I open my tax notice and see that where my last year’s required payment of municipal residential tax of $556.10 is not anywhere close to my municipal taxes this year. I was quite prepared to pay a modest increase of 4.5 per cent (556.10 + 25.02 = 581.12). But no, what is facing me is a whopping 113 per cent increase — pushing my municipal tax to $1,210.12.
That’s what will happen if the sewer project goes ahead. The $629 to be paid by the average property owner is not a one-time cost, it applies every year. The $629 figure is taken from our municipal grant application and applies to "an average residential property." So because my property is probably above average it could be even more.
Let’s say, for example, you are a single parent owner of an average residence, in a household of four people, that’s a month’s worth of groceries, gone!
It doesn’t get any easier if you rent because your rent will be increased to offset the landlord’s tax bill, plus his capital costs. Plus, council has basically said if you rent you have no say in the matter at all.
That’s not all. Once the sewer system is in place, there is going to be a hook-up cost and, although council has stated they don’t know what the cost for hook-up is going to be, they have stated unofficially that that the cost will be between $5,000-$10,000.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to phone an acquaintance in Colwood or View Royal to find out what it cost them.
The property owners outside the proposed ‘sewer area’ should not be complacent as the sewer system will be "constructed in such a fashion that future hook-up by most of the remaining area of Sooke can be accommodated."
Even those of you who live in Sooke East, in such places as Manzer Road and the like, will be paying, at a minimum, your portion of capital and maintenance costs. And this you will be paying before you even get piped water.
Are you ready?
(OBriain is a director of Worried Residents Against Tax Hikes)
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