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We already pay enough taxes

We already pay enough taxes Editor: With respect to the recent editorial about endorsing a new infrastructure maintenance fee (Coast Reporter, March 21) - hang on, isn't that what we already pay taxes for? We currently pay a recreation parcel and val

We already pay enough taxes

Editor:

With respect to the recent editorial about endorsing a new infrastructure maintenance fee (Coast Reporter, March 21) - hang on, isn't that what we already pay taxes for?

We currently pay a recreation parcel and value added fee, which is, by the way, going up this year, at a rate much higher than inflation. We're borrowing money to finish the sewer plant, so to keep piling on more costs to property owners at this time is problematic, especially to fixed income pensioners, for example.

If a retiree is currently paying, let's say, $1,200 per year in property tax after the homeowner grant is applied, then we add another $181, that in essence amounts to roughly a 16 per cent tax increase.

I doubt the rate payers would support that high an increase. And let's be serious about terminology: if that figure is applied to property owners, it is another form of taxation. No shell game of language can hide that; there is only one taxpayer.

Previous staff ensured there were enough funds in reserve to take care of all the infrastructure capital costs for the coming five years. The roughly $600,000 used to pave Heritage Road was nowhere in that plan. The current council has burned through a pile of those reserves for numerous questionable reasons and now they want to hit the taxpayer yet again because, guess what, there are more pressing infrastructure demands than they saw coming?

Keith Thirkell, Sechelt