Good Evening,
My thanks to the chair, council, and the CAO for allotting me this delegation time.
My name is Keith Puzianowski and I am here today speaking on behalf of the La Broquerie Rural Roads and Infrastructure Committee.
For those of you who don’t already know who we are, for the record I’ll explain.
The La Broquerie Rural Roads and Infrastructure Committee is a citizen committee representing the interests of rural taxpayers relating to municipal services and the rates they pay.
It is our mission to hold our elected representatives accountable, to be fiscally responsible and transparent in their dealings, and to ensure that our elected representatives and their municipal staff conduct themselves in a manner that extolls the virtues of good governance.
This citizen committee is comprised of 7 members, three from Ward 1, three from Ward 2, plus myself as chair.
These members were chosen based on some basic criteria:
1) A clear commitment to improving our community
2) No political agenda or political aspirations
3) Has not done and is not doing business with the RM now or in the future
This committee was formed in response to a public outcry regarding the large rate increase this year and the poor service levels from the municipality. Our community feels that the rate increase is not congruent to what their expectations are with basic infrastructure maintenance.
The intended purpose of this committee is to work collaboratively with all stakeholders including council to raise the quality of our roads and related infrastructure by acting in an advisory capacity. We strongly believe that community involvement is necessary to ensure that our tax dollars are being used effectively and responsibly.
It is said that the quality of a society is best measured by how they treat the most vulnerable.
The latest tax hike effects people in a big way.
You have heard from seniors in this room talking about the terrible effects of this tax hike, I have spoken to other folks like seniors or just people on a fixed income. I spoke to a retired lady who tells me that her husband had to take up a part time job just to keep up with inflation and these new taxes.
How many people out there who planned for their retirement now can’t afford to live in the home they built to live out their remaining years in this RM?
You gentlemen have an obligation to them to do the work to make sure that your actions, when it comes to hiking rates, is done in a careful and measured way. That all other options are investigated to the finest detail to find waste and duplication in your administration. I strongly suspect that this rate increase was done without a truly critical eye towards efficiency. It is the mandate of this committee to understand if that due diligence was done on your part or was lacking.
With that said this committee will be formally requesting recognition from Council, as it is our right to do so under the Manitoba Municipalities Act. We will be requesting some information that will help us understand if this rate increase is indeed justified. We will be starting with requests for records pertaining to load tickets that should include date, contractor name, type of product, quantity and delivery location.
Furthermore, we will be requesting information on the Road maintenance Program. We are certain that actual road maintenance program exists because it is listed as a line item in the RM budget.
This committee and the rural rate payer would like to know:
– What is the plan
– Who administers it
– Is there a strategy for incremental improvement
– What criteria is used to identify areas for maintenance
– Who if anyone oversees the actual delivery of materials to the site.
– Is there a long-range plan to improve the road and drainage
A very large portion of our taxes go into this Road maintenance program. I think everyone agrees that the ratepayers have a right to some specific information, and it is your obligation both ethically and legally to provide it through the sharing of information.
As an aside I am aware that traffic gravel will be used east of the 302, and west of the 302 A Base will be used. I would be interested to know how this decision came to be made. From the number of road building experts I have consulted, there is a consensus among them that the two materials need to be used together to work effectively, one as a base and the other as a finisher. This fact suggests that there is a knowledge gap in best practices that could easily be corrected with a phone call or a meeting with an individual with knowledge on such matters, of which there is no shortage of locally.
There has been some discussion at a recent council meeting about mill rates. Not everyone here will know what that is and how it is calculated so I will give a quick overview and do a mathematical exercise to demonstrate where we in la Broquerie are at, versus our neighbours.
Mill comes from the Latin word milli meaning thousand. The thousand part will make sense in a moment.
A mill rate is the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of a property. I mill is equal to one dollar in property tax levied per one thousand dollars of that property’s assessed value.
Property taxes here are calculated by multiplying 45% of the assessed taxable property value by the mill rate 16.973 and dividing by 1000.
That’s where the milli comes in on mill rate. So If I have an assessed property value of $343,600 -45% of that portioned taxable value of said property will be $153,640.00.
Take the portioned assessed value $153,640 x mill rate 16.973 divided by 1000 = $2607.73
Using the same calculation by comparison this same property in:
– Steinbach with a 14.4 mill rate would be taxed at $2,212.42 per year
– St Anne with a 9.6 mill rate would be taxed at $1474.94 per year
– Piney with a 12.09 mill rate would be taxed at $1981.96 per year
– Hanover with a 12.0 mill rate would be taxed at $1843.68 per year
Let’s consider for a moment those people on the financial margins, and those people who have large agricultural operations who are part of our economic engine that are hugely affected by that difference in mill rates. As I already stated, you as the elected representatives are responsible to ensure that our community remains competitive, and are doing your due diligence to keep the rates competitive and the service at the highest possible standards. In a democracy it is the responsibility of the citizenry to keep you, the elected officials, accountable.
So you shouldn’t be at all surprised by our presence here today.
In closing I would like to state that:
Where will we be in 5 or 10 years from now?
Will we still be squabbling over dirt roads?
To the Reeve’s credit he did reach out to me on 2 occasions by phone and we did have one meeting to discuss the details of having this committee recognized by council so that we can get on the public record. I personally felt that the interactions were as productive as they could be given the short time we had to discuss our committee, and I did get a sense that there was genuine interest in moving forward. I can’t know what is in another individual’s heart and mind, I can only know an individual’s intentions by their actions.
The Reeve made a commitment to take it back to council where, as I understand it, it died a quick death.
Which brings me to the Southeastern Region Municipal Committee. As I understand, it is comprised of council members from a handful of RM’s who get together monthly to consult one another on what to do about the sorry state of their collective roads. It is clear that none of them are doing well in that department so what do they expect to gain by breathing each others oxygen? Measuring one’s success in degrees against someone else’s failure is still failure.
This council has squandered an opportunity to work directly with the people that put them in those seats. Instead, they have decided to go elsewhere to seek guidance. Personally, I think it’s a shame that this council has demonstrated that they lack the confidence in the talented, knowledgeable, and committed people within our own community to even bother to sit down with them as a group and have an informed conversation about the current state of our roads and what is best to do about it. The optics don’t look great when the preference is to keep the citizens at arms length.
I strongly urge council to consider a collaborative approach, to reach out to us and perhaps we can work together to improve the conditions beyond status quo.