To the Editor:
For those folks who have just received their Town of Creston property tax notice, how does it affect your lifestyle or your ability to continue to operate a business in Creston?
In an article by Lorne Eckersley in a May 2011 Advance, he stated the total salary budget for the Town of Creston, including elected officials, was $2,582,351, of which $1,403,372 was unionized employees. By extraction, the balance of $1,178.979 would be for salaries of management and elected officials.
The above indicates we have an expensive bureaucracy to manage a small town. The town is locked in to a long-term policing contract with the RCMP, which is very expensive. We as taxpayers will be looking at up to an 18 per cent tax increase in a few years to pay for RCMP policing, after the reserve for this purpose is used up.
The most troubling part of this agreement is the officers we are paying for won’t be used exclusively for Creston.
A large portion of the population of Creston are pensioners, non-government working people and businesspeople who cannot afford to keep supporting this expensive local and regional government, as our incomes have not kept pace with ever increasing property taxes and other costs.
Other jurisdictions do a better job than Creston in providing affordable government to their citizens. I would hope that certain members of council would support a movement to more affordable government in Creston and perhaps borrow cost saving ideas from these jurisdictions.
If you are a property owner and feel your taxed to the max, contact me at tyndon@gmail.com so we can organize to promote and lobby for affordable government for the town of Creston.
Creston