Steve's Political Rant #4

1) City of Quesnel Long-Term Debt

Over the last number of years, the City of Quesnel has borrowed money for various projects supported by residents including City Hall, the Johnston Bridge, the local Soccer Facility with a total of $11 million for these projects. Now, Quesnel Council is looking into investing taxpayers dollars for 2 other projects: 1) Quesnel Museum and 2) Multi-Centre. While the Multi-Centre has been discussion at length for some time, the Museum project is a relatively new project being discussed publicly, for funding via long-term debt as 1 option for funding. The Multi-Centre referendum is slated to proceed in May of 2008. My concern is that given the current economic climate, now may not be the time to go further in long-term debt even though, the Multi-Centre & Quesnel Museum are most worthy of taxpayer support. I hope that taxpayers' in Quesnel will consider this going forward from now until the local goverment election in November of 2008. I can confirm that the City of Quesnel along with other muncipal gov'ts do have a formula that they can not exceed and it is: No more then 25% of a local government revenue can go towards payment of long-term debt. If a local government exceeds this formula, then the appropriate loan authorization by-law will not be approved by Victoria.

2) Electoral Boundary Commission Act (Amendment Act), 2007

Hon. Mike DeJong (Government House Leader + Minister of Aboriginal Affairs) informed the House that this Bill won't proceed unless there is consensus on both sides to move it forward. The NDP, at this time, don't support this Bill. This Bill will die as the House will rise for its' Christmas break at 6:30pm tonight (Thursday, November 29th, 2007). This will be a shame, of course, as the interim report of the Electoral Boundary Commission was decried by the NDP as unacceptable for rural people and their right to representation in the Legislature. It appears that the present ridings are here to stay for the immediate future including the next provincial election of 2009.