An NPA Vancouver councillor is warning city residents the tax hikes approved by council today will actually be higher than what is being advertised.
George Affleck says when you factor in all the variables it will be higher than the predicted 2.75%.
“When you include utilities you are looking at a 3 to 4% tax increase for residents of Vancouver.”
Affleck says he had to dig to find out actual details on the budget.
“The mayors office budget has increased 20% over the last four years. The sustainability group has increased almost 1000%, when you do the math, over the last four years and things like street cleaning have gone down 20% over the last two or three years, no wonder I get so many people calling and complaining about their streets and sidewalks not being clean.”
He says you don’t make Vancouver more affordable by raising taxes
Affleck also says he is being stonewalled from finding details about a city lease agreement with Easy Park for a downtown parking lot.
“It is a multi-year contract and they are renting the spaces at about 96-bucks a pop downtown to uh..to a company for, not for parking, but for other uses. The average parking spot in the downtown area is over $ 200 a spot and I want to know why we went down so low and I want to what process we went through to negotiate this deal, I don’t think there was a process.”
Affleck says the standard request for proposal was never issued by the city.
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