Letter to the Editor

The appointment of an Auditor General for local governments is long overdue and I applaud this decision.  It is way past time that the taxpayers had someone who can look into how the city manages our taxpayer dollars and suggest ways to correct the inefficiencies that are so obvious in Kimberley.

Mayor Ron McRae states that he thinks it is politically motivated and redundant and states they are accountable to the public in terms of elections and accessibility to council and staff if they have questions. The fact is, it is very difficult to get good information from the city.  A prime example of this is the replacement of the Mark Creek Flume (pictured above), which was not done by referendum, but rammed through under the Alternate Approval Process. This was done before there were any meetings regarding the project, only an estimated cost, that it was a health and safety issue, and that it would be done over a three-year period, and funding would be one-third federal, one-third provincial and one-third city.

Well, we are currently in the first phase of the project and still no funding commitment.  The project is behind schedule and indicates that there will be considerable extra costs involved.  There were many upset people over the closing of the St. Mary’s Ave. Bridge which will result in many traffic problems and safety issues in the area, without any solution to date. We still haven’t seen any plans for phase two and three. The public have been led down the garden path with inaccurate information and lack of pertinent information.  If this project had been put to the public as a referendum with all the information and ramifications and complete costs associated with the project, I am sure it would have been defeated.

As far as the city becoming more efficient, Mayor McRae states they have been working on this for years and have plenty of mechanisms in place to be responsive to taxpayers.  In a conversation with the mayor, I questioned if it was in the union agreement that workers were to return to the maintenance shops for morning coffee, lunch and afternoon coffee.  The answer I received was that it was not a union requirement but it was a long standing practice.  This seems to be one of the cost savings measures that the new Auditor General would be interested in.  It would save one to two hours per day per employee that work on projects around town, and many dollars in fuel.  It would also cut down on our carbon dependency, and more importantly, improve the perception the taxpayers have of city employees.

The fact that Kimberley has one of the highest tax rates of any city our size in BC, I feel this step by the Provincial Government in appointing an Auditor General is long overdue and will hopefully make our municipal governments realize they need to be more accountable to the taxpayers who have to pick up the tab no matter how inefficient they run their operations.  This concept is definitely NOT redundant!

S. Fletcher,

Kimberley

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