Wednesday, February 4, 2015

PRESS RELEASE FEBRUARY 4TH, 2015




FROM: CITIZENS FOR CHANGE TO THE MASTER WATER PLAN (CCMWP)

We are a group of Greater Vernon residents who have joined together to assess the staff driven requests for higher water rates to fund the long term capital programs and to increase the reserves for future needs.
Our group wants to ensure that the public will, expressed by the November 15 referendum, is upheld. At the GVAC meeting on January 22, we requested a moratorium on all spending approval relating to the defeated referendum and expressed our view that a new direction needed to be pursued. We are in the process of preparing a presentation for the GVAC which will provide recommendations for needed changes to the Master Water plan.
At the January 22nd meeting of the GVAC, there was no action taken on our request for a moratorium. However we noted that the GVAC seemed to focus on defining mechanisms to defeat or by-pass the negative result of the referendum, but they also acknowledged that a new direction to the Master Water Plan was required. It appears that our elected representatives are prepared to consider “back-door” funding that will move RDNO pre-referendum programs forward by raising water rates to cover the costs of the expenditures, under the cover of ‘reserves’, and to date without public input.
Our group is concerned that the budget debate scheduled for tomorrow morning will proceed to set water rates, before we have an opportunity to present our proposed new direction for the Master Water Plan, and then the taxpayer rate will be locked in to commitments defeated by the water plan referendum. Water rates for the same amount of drinking water in 2014 show that Greater Vernon domestic water users pay $899.70, more than twice the Penticton rate of $427.62, and triple the $291.98 in Kelowna, for the same amount of water. From 2010 to 2014 the cost of a cu. meter of drinking water has doubled for Greater Vernon water users.
Changes to the billing structure mean that less of the water bill is from metered usage and more is coming from arbitrary fixed front end charges.
Our citizen’s group is again calling for a moratorium until the GVAC has an opportunity to review our proposal. The next available opportunity for our presentation is March 5 and we ask that all budget approvals supporting water rate increases be suspended until that date, or we ask that a special meeting of the GVAC be convened, to allow our elected representatives to be informed of the proposed new direction to the Master Water Plan.

Contact Information: Terry Mooney, temo@telus.net or 250-542-2847





 Eric Jackson, Janet Green, Wayne McGrath, 
Klaus Tribes, Maria Besso, Dennis Windsor, 
Jim Bodkin, Terry Mooney. Absent: Dana Mills

See also KISS FM News

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I have been a resident of Coldstream since 1976. I have had 15 years of experience on Council, 3 years as Mayor. As a current Councillor I am working to achieve fair water and sewer rates and to ensure that taxpayers get fair treatment. The current direction regarding water supply is unsustainable and I am doing all I can to get the most cost effective water supply possible.