Saturday, December 18, 2010

Honest Reporting...

On Tuesday, Council will deal with a report from the City's Acting Social Development Manager on proceeding with amendments to the City's Zoning and Water/Sewer Bylaws (Secondary Suite "Bylaw")

See her report here

However, 1 Glaring omission is that WL Council, at the Tuesday Dec 14th Committee of the Whole Meeting was did not decide on utility rates for secondary suites, due to a 3-3 tie vote, even though the report from the Acting Social Development Manager states that Council agreed on a 20% increase to the utility rate.  Now, how do I know thisI attended the meeting and took notes.  See that blog post here (Clarification Note - WL Council did agree on a 20% utility rate for secondary suites earlier this year but that was solely for the purpose of public consultation and the public responded that the utility rate should be 30-50% for secondary suites)

For the record, on a charge for utility rates for secondary suites, this is how each Councillor and the Mayor voted on Dec 14th:

For a 20% utility rate for secondary suites:

WL City Councillors SPS Rathor, Laurie Walters and Tom Barr

For a 30-50% utility rate for secondary suites:

Mayor Kerry Cook and Councillors Sue Zacharias & Geoff Bourdon

City Councillor Natalie Hébert was absent from the meeting so I'm not 100% sure of her feelings, given the results of the public consultations on secondary suites, but she was previously in support of a 20% utility rate for secondary suites when the issue came up previously at the Committee of the Whole (WL Council) meeting earlier this year

I hope that this is clarified on Tuesday but a City Staff report should accurately reflect decisions that were agreed to at the meeting.  If Councillor Hébert is in support, here and now, of a 20% charge of utilities for a secondary suite, then the report should accurately reflect this and not hypothesize a decision of Council when Council itself could not agree on a utility rate charge for secondary suites on Dec 14th

SBF

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