DWK reduces taxes by more than 1%
by Wayne Moore (Castanet)
West Kelowna Council provided its taxpayers with an early Christmas present Monday.
During 2010 tax deliberations, council unanimously agreed to return $234,000, earmarked as discretionary council spending, back to the taxpayers in the form of a tax break.
This means that instead of the forecast 5% tax increase in 2010, taxpayers will see an increase in the range of about 3.8%.
“We need to do this,” says Councillor Duane Ophus.
“The $234,000 has not been allocated so it should be used to reduce taxes.”
West Kelowna CFO, Jim Zaffino, says the $234,000 came through efficiencies.
“Some departments did not ask for and did not need as much money as they needed in prior years. They do different things in different ways,” says Zaffino.
“Also, it came from one time requests in 2009 that did not carry forward because the job was done and there was no need for that. Council was able to look at the discretionary fund and fund the supplemental requests.”
Council still has a reserve of $330,000 for discretionary spending in the bank which has been carried over from 2009.
Last year, council only spent about $1,500 in discretionary spending.
Zaffino says the current amount of discretionary funds would be considered a lot for an established community but not a lot for a new municipality such as West Kelowna.
He says the municipality is evolving from a rural area to an urban community, and that requires money.
“There are more unknowns that can happen and there are more requests so council can use that in a number of way. They talked about an economic development plan. There is a lot more that has to be done to get us up to speed.”
Council spent close to seven hours debating the financial plan, which will require about $21.7 million from taxation.
Total expenses for 2010 are expected to be about $62.2 million, down about $200,000 from 2009.
Council approved a little more than $4.2 million in capital expenditures along with nearly $90,000 in grants-in-aid to various community groups.
Changes can still be made to the 2010 budget before the document must be submitted to the province by the middle of May.
