Trail expansion plan meeting opposition
By Kyra Hoggan
A regional district director is expressing strong opposition to a boundary expansion plan proposed by the City of Trail, after an agreement was reached last week between Trail and Teck to allow the plan to move forward ( http://trailchampion.com/news/city-and-teck-broker-agreement-massive-expansion-trail-boundaries-24858#.UaU ).
“I will always, always be strongly opposed to it,” said Regional District of Kootenay Boundary Area ‘A’ director Ali Grieve, “but it’s something that’s partly out of our control.”
She said once a majority of landowners want it, and some mitigation is offered, the province will approve it.
“The province has already told us there’s not going to be losers in this,” she added. “We’ll see. Those tax dollars are critical to services Beaver Valley relies on, so it impacts Fruitvale and Montrose, too. (Mayors of both communities have also panned the expansion.) If we don’t have access to those funds, we don’t have access to recreation – and what does that do to communities?”
She said she’d still oppose the plan, even if mitigation offered completely offset the tax loss, arguing that the majority of a region’s tax base should not be in the hands of a single community.
“Trail and Teck have worked out huge win/wins for themselves – so far, we’ve been left out of the conversation,” she said. “Trail is in the driver’s seat. Trial needs to update their study to 2013 numbers, then I expect they’ll invite us to the table to see what services will be negatively impacted and how we can address them.
“Trail has relentlessly pursued this for years and years – (at one point) they told us we should just raise taxes,” she added. “We’re not prepared to increase our taxes one cent – and we’re not prepared to accept status quo.”
She said if the mitigation Trail offers is only an equal offset of the tax base being lost, it won’t be good enough … and she doesn’t expect to see a resolution any time soon.
“It’s a process that’s probably going to take a long time,” she said, calling Trail mayor Dieter Bogs’ suggested18-month timeline, “aggressively optimistic”.
Trail city council, at its regular meeting last night, voted in favour of moving the plan forward, with only councillor Gord DeRosa voting against.
