West Vancouver District Budget – 2020

Residents of West Vancouver were first informed in January that, even though the recent (10 year) inflation rate was about 2% – the District planned to increase property taxes by over 6%

With the citizen protests which followed, that 6% had to be reduced … and in February we expected some reduction in the tax-grab.

But no-one expected the “wipe-out” economic calamity that hit the entire world in March due to Covid-19.

That changed everything. Or so we thought. On April 20th WVD introduced “Budget-2” which, with the economy in melt-down .. propose an INCREASE of 2% in taxes!

A meeting to ratify that hard-to-believe-tax-grab is scheduled for Monday April 27th. The public will of course be social distanced from the decision makers.

In the meantime … together with a $2 million fire truck – claimed to be essential (?) we will publish key costs that push the taxes up.

These increases push their way onto taxpayers – in our view – because Council is sorely lacking in leadership and insistence on a responsible budget in these times of economic chaos.

(Note .. unlike other governments e.g. New Zealand which took a 20% cut in the PM’s salary .. and her cabinet … WVD has proposed NO salary cuts. )

Some history:-

From WVD own documents