Rural director Mike Grenier, right (Image credit: Mel Rothenburger).

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Who were the ‘divisive’ ones in TNRD rural tax clash?

Feb 17, 2024 | 8:00 AM

THE WORDS ‘DIVISIVE’ and “irresponsible” were liberally tossed around as local-government reps met this week. There was emotion, talk of the need for “teamwork” vs. “team sports,” of feeling “uncomfortable.”

“It seems you’re pitting us against you,” Kamloops councillor Bill Sarai claimed at one point. The contention ended with a lop-sided vote against a motion that caused the ire.

For a change, it wasn’t happening in Kamloops council chambers, and the target wasn’t the mayor. No, it all went down in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board room. The unfortunate lightning rod was Mike Grenier, who represents the Cherry Creek-Tranquille Valley area west of the city.

His crime was to propose using a chunk of surplus funds from the development services department — specifically building inspections — to reduce a 2024 average provisional tax increase from 8.4 per cent to three per cent for electoral areas. That would have taken $575,000 from a $2.7 million reserve fund and spread it among the 10 EAs, which serve the rural parts of the district.

They say all politics is local. It doesn’t get any more local — or parochial — than it was at the TNRD on Thursday afternoon as municipal directors, led by Kamloops City councillors, took on their rural counterparts who were asking for the change. I haven’t attended a TNRD meeting in almost a year and a half — though I do sometimes sit in online — but this one was reminiscent of the old days when city and country directors would go at it hammer and tongs.

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Kamloops director Mike O’Reilly led off by calling Grenier’s motion “divisive,” and threatening to bring a motion forward to City council — for which he said he had “overwhelming support” among his council colleagues — to “withdraw” a $250,000 payment to the TNRD.

“We need to look at things holistically,” he said.

Clearwater mayor and director Merlin Blackwell agreed with O’Reilly, saying, “I think we’re playing team sports here and I don’t appreciate it,” adding Grenier’s proposal amounted to “a short-term fix.”

“I really don’t feel comfortable with it,” added Barriere’s Ward Stamer.

“I feel divisiveness in this room,” said Sarai, suggesting that maybe rural residents should be charged for using Kamloops pools and ice rinks. “Do we start charging user fees for people that don’t live in Kamloops?”

He added, “We’re supposed to be one team that pulls the rope together.”

And Kamloops councillor/director Kelly Hall contended that using reserve funds to control taxes was “not a sound idea,” apparently not realizing it’s commonly done by local governments. That, in fact, levelling out tax increases is part of the reason for reserves.

And on it went, this notion that Grenier was proposing to provide relief to rural taxpayers at the expense of municipal dwellers. Grenier fought back, passionately arguing that what he was asking for wouldn’t change the budget, simply use up some of the unallocated funds to help out rural taxpayers who are struggling.

“We need to recognize their struggles and send them life jackets today,” he said. “This is a modest, modest amount coming out of a service that we fund as EAs.”

It fell on deaf ears. A compromise that would give some of the money to municipalities was dismissed because it would dilute the shares to the point of being negligible. Grenier did receive some support from other electoral area directors including Doug Haughton and Herb Graham but it wasn’t enough. Financial matters are decided with a “weighted” vote based on population and, when hands were counted, Grenier was defeated 50 to six.

What was really surprising was that several electoral area directors caved to their municipal peers and voted against a measure that would benefit their residents.

There are a couple of things that stand out about this bit of theatre. The first and probably most important is that the claim by municipal directors that they were protecting their own taxpayers is way over-stated. The Grenier plan wouldn’t alter the budget and wouldn’t cost municipal taxpayers one thin dime.

Those taxpayers have contributed peanuts to the reserve fund that Grenier wanted to use. A slide put up by staff showed that 65 per cent of building services revenues are brought in via permit fees both from EAs and from small participating municipalities, another 15 per cent from electoral area taxation, five per cent from municipal service agreements and 15 per cent from surplus or reserve funds.

Chair Barbara Roden calculated that, in the past five years, 22 to 25 per cent of building permit revenue has come from the six participating municipalities.

But the $2.7 million in the reserve for building inspection services was actually built up by and large from the rural areas. I’m told on good authority that it was accumulated with rural taxation between 2008 and 2014 before municipal members contributed anything. So the idea that Grenier’s motion would have robbed from the cities to pay for a rural tax break is a myth. Rural taxpayers have already paid for what Grenier wanted to withdraw from the surplus.

The other thing that struck me was all the municipal blathering about teamwork. Grenier had nothing bad or divisive to say about anybody. The divisiveness came from his municipal counterparts — they were the ones who caused the rift by imagining an issue that wasn’t there.

Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.