Council Zeroes In On Tax Hike

By Corey Fischer

Mar 11, 2019 | 7:00 AM

Spallumcheen residents are facing a 2.46 percent tax hike this year.

That’s the figure presented by staff at council’s recent committee of the whole meeting.

Mayor Christine Fraser says the increase is needed for operations, and for staffing, which has been reorganized.

She says they no longer have a public works manager position, with those duties now covered by several other staff.

“We’ve hired a manager of engineering and development/planning and she is very multi faceted, so it will be good for the township. She’ll be able to help out in a lot of different ways to provide some capacity on applications as well as with the public works engineering.”

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The mayor says their public works foreman has stepped up to a bigger role, and they have a deputy manager of operations.

“He is in his second year now. He does more of what the public works manager would do along with Brent Stoward, who is our public works foreman.”

Fraser says they are working on streamlining policies.

“We’re going back and making sure there are policies for everything, so there is clear direction when we have new staff, whether it’s the purchasing policy, how the brushing is done or how the financial procedures are done, because the township has historically had some issues in finance, so were making sure we have very clear policies.”

Council has yet to give any readings to the financial plan, but Fraser doesn’t expect much change to the 2.46% increase.

“We are right on target for that. There is no variances in this year’s budget to go over that.”

by Corey Fischer