Setting priorities - that, to my mind, is the most important and most difficult task facing elected officials. And with its rushed decision last Thursday to approve a $3 million to $3.6 million construction budget for its new office building - ignoring its own resolution in March to cap the budget at $2 million - the Sunshine Coast Regional District board has failed in that task.
The SCRD currently has two office buildings at the corner of Wharf Avenue and Teredo Street in Sechelt: the main office in the Royal Terraces and the Green Gables building across the parking lot, which was acquired when the regional government outgrew the first building. Now it has grown even larger, and the SCRD board has decided it is vital to provide bigger and better work space for its 56 staff.
I initially liked the SCRD's plan to buy and renovate the old Ministry of Forests office building on Field Road. The price was right - $1 million to purchase and an estimated $430,000 to renovate - and I recognized the SCRD would need new office space one day.
Things look very different now that the renovation budget has mushroomed eight times larger, even before the subtrade tenders have been let. At this price, I think the SCRD board is morally obligated to get approval from its citizens via a referendum. Instead, the board has written a blank cheque that taxpayers will be forced to cover. Rather than going to referendum, the board plans to use an alternative approval process. That means the borrowing bylaw, which has not yet been written, would be defeated if 10 per cent of citizens sign a petition against it. If that happens, the SCRD board still plans to borrow the money, but over a five-year rather than 20-year term, which requires no permission from the public but will cost more. Citizens get two choices: pay an arm - or pay an arm and a leg. This is completely anti-democratic.
The most depressing part of the whole fiasco is that it may be the death knell for new recreation facilities. Tax hikes are always difficult to swallow, and the "no new taxes" argument has been the most compelling reason why previous recreation referendums have failed. I had hoped that the latest recreation initiative underway at the SCRD might gain enough public support to build the Sechelt pool and the Gibsons arena/community centre, toward which so many citizens have worked for years.
But now property owners are facing a three to four per cent increase in their taxes to pay for a government building they will likely visit only once or twice a year, when they pay their water and garbage fees or license their dogs. After such a financial slap in the face, it will be hard to convince people to approve a referendum for two more multi-million dollar facilities, even if, as I suspect, the pool and arena have more mass appeal than even the "greenest" office building.
And the near doubling of the budget estimates for the office are a wake-up call that the cost of the proposed pool and arena are likely to shoot through the roof as well. During 10 years of political dithering, the Sunshine Coast has missed its opportunity to build recreation facilities at an affordable price.
I would have liked both the recreation facilities and the new regional office to go to referendum at the same time. That would have given citizens the opportunity to set priorities for their government and decide which, if any, of these buildings they are willing to pay for.
But that won't happen. And by pushing the new office building ahead of the pool and arena, the SCRD board has shown a very questionable sense of priorities.
