Regarding North Cowichan mulling a big tax increase to hire new office staff:
North Cowichan is not a village, or a town, or a city; it is a lot of people strung along many kilometres of roads within the municipality, with the exception of Chemainus and Crofton, (which probably could be villages by their own right). North Cowichan has around 29,000 residents occupying around 195 square kilometres.
Because we have a small population, we do not need more high-priced staff to help run our local government. This is “empire building” at its best by our new council.
Executives, like who are proposed, are more suitable in a large city, certainly not here. What will happen is these people are hired and sign a healthy severance package, work for a year and become “unsuitable” and receive thousands of dollars of severance, so that $100,000 yearly salary will have expanded to $200,000 to $300,000 in severance.
I am retired and my OAS just went up a whopping 60 cents and my CPP went up $14.94. I can’t afford tax increases like we have had the past few years. I am only one of many retirees here who feel the same. Over 24 per cent of the population of North Cowichan is over 65 (some 7,300 of us) and I am sure that most of them feel the same about large tax increases year after year.
Let’s try to consider the income of the 24 per cent of the population by watching our pennies when spending our money. If we wanted to live in a big city attitude, we would have moved to a big city.
Frank Hudson,
Chemainus