Fun and games at Greater Vernon Services.

If you wanted to have free entertainment you should have attended this morning’s meeting of the Greater Vernon Services Committee. Short of popcorn and pop it was the best show in town.

While the beginning was somewhat boring sparks started to fly when it came to decide how much GVW should pay to the City and Coldstream in lieu of overhead and yard costs.

Some explanation is necessary to understand what the disagreement was about. GVW contracts distribution and billing of water within Vernon and Coldstream to the City. In turn, the City subcontracts these services within Coldstream to the District of Coldstream. If you think this is a crazy system I’ll agree with you.

NORD has it’s own formula for determining overhead and yard costs which is different from the City’s formula. GVW used NORD’s formula to calculate these costs and the fun begun. Eventually, the three financial officers sat down and agreed on a formula that was brought in front of NORD. (Here is another crazy situation: the meeting starts out as a NORD meeting with seven NORD Directors, then it changes into a GVSC meeting where decisions are made. Theoretically, since they have seven Directors they have a quorum for a NORD meeting).

The problem was that some of the Directors disagreed with the bureaucrats recommendations. They also discovered that the contract between the parties have never been signed and some questioned the validity of the decisions. What a fiasco! After five years of operation they discover the lack of signed contract.

Eventually the majority approved the recommendation. As the result Coldstream will receive a higher than expected overhead and yard cost refund. Maybe we will get some reduction of the 9.17% tax increase? We can always hope.

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