PARKSVILLE – The City of Parksville is looking at a 4 percent hike in taxes for 2018, and for the next 4 years after that.
A provisional budget has been introduced and a big portion of the spending is for infrastructure replacement and renewal. Mayor Marc Lefebvre says it’s not something you want to delay.
“If you start taking a gamble then you get what I call ‘breakdown'”, he said. “Interruption whether its water service or sewer service or road service, whatever the case may be. You want to make sure that your infrastructure replacement program is conservative enough and realistic enough to know that what you’re changing is being done at the right time.”
Lefebvre likened the infrastructure spending to an old car commercial warning of the perils of delays, ‘You can pay me now or pay me later’.
And while infrastructure spending accounts for the bulk of the budget, the mayor says it also addresses other issues.
“Having bought the Ermineskin property, we’re going to hire another worker to help us out with the overall parks program,” said Lefebvre. “We’re hiring a new police officer to be seconded to traffic control which is a problem for us and a problem for everybody in town in terms of speeding. So we’re trying to curb that.”
Residents are encouraged to take a look at the budget document on the city web site.
If there are questions, they can be brought to council at the next deliberation meeting, November 16 at the Civic and Technology Centre.
daryl.major@jpbg.ca