Dear Editor,
There’s been much dialogue on the city proposals for recreation facilities and City staff have done well providing information available. Conversations I have heard seem to focus on losing the golf course.
RELATED: City of Maple Ridge considering new $393M recreation proposal
I feel the bigger concern is poor transparency and reliability of financing plan.
There is a target budget where 60 per cent ($235.8M) of funding will be serviced by a property tax increase for 25 years.
This is on top of 4.5 per cent increases for cost of living. The other 40 per cent ($157.2M ) of funding is speculative, from Amenity Cost Charges (ACCs) yet to be realized and still waiting final approval to collect.
If we expect recovery split evenly between the highest paying ACCs; residential ($706 per apartment) and commercial ($3.03 per sqM), we would need 111,000 new apartments and 25,000,000 sqM of new commercial space every year for the next 10 years (when payment would be due to contractors for completed work).
I love the work being done on attracting this kind of investment, but is this realistic?
This is all assuming estimates are accurate.
I’m hoping the estimates used aren’t simple $/SqFt and that a comparative order of magnitude estimate was used at least, although I’m not sure sufficient planning information is available for that.
No information has been made available on how the budget has been calculated. In addition, there is no indication – in literature provided to date – on total cost of borrowing (interest), nor contingency being used.
Response to questions made July 9 have not been received from the email address provided in the information session literature.
Responsible investors would never approve this venture without further appropriate due diligence.
In my opinion, it’s a little distasteful to ask taxpayers to do so.
Banks or other funding sources may be willing to finance, since their return is guaranteed by repayment through tax revenue and it would be irrelevant to them if construction costs ballon or were underestimated. It is the taxpayer who would be left holding the bag.
It doesn’t matter if you love or don’t care about the golf course, we deserve better assurances on the financial plan, which simply can’t be provided with current diligence.
We deserve better and don’t need to rush this through or we risk having another Metro Vancouver wastewater treatment plant financial burden on Maple Ridge residents.
Gary Skelton, Maple Ridge