A majority of mayors from across the province met today in only the second caucus of its kind to be held.
A top priority on their agenda was finding new revenue sources for infrastructure spending.
Langley Township Mayor Jack Froese says municipalities shoulder the bulk of costs to update aging infrastructure.
Froese was asked how city council can share the burden with the feds, when Ottawa is downloading costs.
“It is the million dollar question. The downloading of various services I know Vancouver has been discussing the closing of the Coast Guard base and that is one form of downloading and it comes in subtle little ways all the way along. Definitely it is a concern that we have and then again we are responsible to maintain and repair infrastructures. Working with government and slow down the downloading and stop it certainly it would help.”
Froese says city councils have only one avenue to drum up dollars to pay for updating infrastructure.
“Our tax base is property tax and property tax only that I think puts a lot of burden on homeowners and the people that pay property taxes to cover all the costs so we do need to share it in other forms of taxation.”
Froese says the federal government needs to help municipalities foot the bill for replacing aging infrastructure.
“There are funding programs that the federal government have finishing off now and they have had in the past and I think we need to keep that going because we have to share the burden. Municipalities are responsible for most infrastructure in Canada and it is a significant part of our tax dollars and we do need to share the burden with the federal government.”
140 of BC’s 160 mayors attended the mayors caucus at the Union of BC Municipalities meeting.
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