The Capital Regional District shouldn’t be getting into the “zero-sum game” of paying compensation to municipalities for hosting regional facilities such as sewage treatment plants, says the CEO of the chamber of commerce.
“I don’t think we should be paying compensation for regional facilities at all. I think it ends up costing the taxpayer money for no real benefit,” said Bruce Carter, CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, on Tuesday.
“You pay for Esquimalt, then you pay for Victoria, then you talk about the dump, then you talk about pumping stations. The next thing you know, someone is going to want it for a park.”
Two years ago, when the CRD had decided on Esquimalt’s McLoughlin Point as the site of a single regional sewage-treatment plant, it offered the township a compensation package estimated at about $19 million — enough to cover the municipality’s share of the costs to build the plant.
Esquimalt council refused to approve zoning variances that would allow the plant to go ahead, and the CRD is now proposing a two-plant option that would see one plant buried under the park at Victoria’s Clover Point and a second plant in Esquimalt, at either McLoughlin Point or Macaulay Point.
Compensation has not been publicly discussed.
In a letter to Victoria councillors, Carter says building at Clover Point seems reasonable given it’s the site of an existing outfall and sewage infrastructure. But, he says, there should be no compensation.
“There has been the suggestion that the Fairfield neighbourhood should receive amenities like Esquimalt did for McLoughlin Point,” his letter says. “This is not a process we favour as it creates even more costs to taxpayers.
“Incurring amenity charges for community services very quickly becomes a zero-sum game where Esquimalt is compensated for McLoughlin, Victoria is compensated for Clover, and Saanich is compensated for hosting the landfill.
“There is only one taxpayer and the chamber is not confident that the taxpayer will realize an overall benefit in light of increased cost and project complexity.”
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps welcomed the endorsement of the Clover Point site, but she said the issue of compensation is another matter.
“An amenity package can make a project more appealing and add more value to the community,” she said. “It might be something that makes it easier to get that project built, so there’s that that needs to be balanced.
“I don’t think we want to throw taxpayer dollars needlessly, but, at the same time, we do want the project built — and if amenities to the Fairfield/Gonzales neighbourhood are going to help ultimately get zoning approved, shovels in the ground and all of our funders happy, then in some cases it’s a small cost.”
Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins said she sees the benefit of providing compensation to municipalities for hosting regional facilities.
“I have always suggested that that is a way of opening the doors, and so I have always supported that a host municipality should receive some compensation in some way,” she said.
