Fiscal Imperatives

The current economic climate is perilous, to say the least. Both market conditions and the economic outlook clearly point to global recession. This affects our community in many ways.

Savings investments have lost value, and for people near or  of retirement age, it will be very difficult to recover lost equity. That directly impacts the ability of our largest growing demographic to plan for their later years enjoying life on Bowen. For younger families, simply making ends meet, let alone planning for the future, becomes increasingly difficult.

With tighter credit and riskier outlooks, construction slows, house prices dip, and the ability to achieve liquidity gets harder. Land development projects get delayed or scaled back.

As the economies slow, there will be layoffs, possible pay/benefit cuts, and  businesses lose clients. (My home based travel business is off 30%).

With less discretionary income, people forego non-essentials. Much of Bowen's retail economy (groceries aside) caters to this sector.

In the face of all this gloom (and I fervently hope that recovery is swift), Bowen Island Municipality can only do certain things. First and foremost is to control our spending. We have a structural 3-4% annual increase built into our budget- from employee pay raises to building our reserves and general cost escalation for rents, contracts and projects.

But there are certain areas where we can economize. Do we need weekly curbside garbage pickup, when most people take their recycling to BIRD. What if we had a droppoff, as Whistler does?

Do we need to replace our Youth Worker and Public Works Superintendent (current vacancies), or should we economize with p/t or contract services?

Are we being uber-efficient in our service delivery, or should we tighten up procedures, reduce redundancies with the downside perhaps of becoming less 'front-door friendly'. An example has to be the inordinate amount of staff time spent on water system administration.

The biggest of all is in our projected capital projects. We need a community hall, not a Taj Mahal. The same could be said for our fire services. We can't afford to repair and repave roads even at the rate we did this year. But we do need to follow our 40 year roads plan to ensure they don't deteriorate.

We will face tough decisions about disposition of community lands. Even rezoned, we may find it hard to market the lands, and by 2010 we will need to either refinance or pay off the $2 million loan.

The 'effective increase' in municipal taxation has been quite modest over the first nine years of incorporation. It will take INCREASED DILIGENCE to keep it that way.

My commitment is to work with Council, staff, community groups and the service providers to ensure that Bowen taxes are being spent prudently and frugally.

What we don't want to do is to abdicate our principles- our 'pillars of sustainability', because green building costs a bit more and environmental protections are seen as an added impediment. Looking at the fundamentals, cutting corners makes no sense. Doing less, and doing it better, does make sense.