Gospel Mission location - again.

[forumdoug]

Lots of great ideas/suggestions - but who pays for it? Private enterprise won't touch the issue with a ten foot pole as there's practically zero ROI. No municipalities, nor the province or feds has funds to put towards the issue - and no one wants to pay more taxes to fund housing and care for a segment of society that's been looked down on since the dawn of haves vs. have nots. Look 40 minutes north to Vernon and the gong show going on there with newly permitted homeless camps now creating (big surprise) further conflict with the public, bylaw and law enforcement:

Typical "who pays for it" post/argument. Simple, construction gets funded from sale of existing KGM property (or properties). Land acquisition gets financed through existing or updated City capital plan. BC Housing to provide ongoing and expanded operating cost grants to KGM once fully operational. Given that its focus would be regional in scope, RDCO should be engaged to provide land acquisition funding to City of Kelowna by way of an across the board tax increase or parcel tax of all member municipalities to minimize tax impact to, at best, a few dollars per year on average $400-500k single family home as spread out across wider tax base. Plus, typical West Kelowna Council seems to eschew paying for such things in their classic NIMBYism would be forced, thanks to City of Kelowna's dominance on RDCO Board, to "suck it up" and have West Kelowna taxpayers pay in too. Kelowna taxpayers should not be on the hook for such things exclusively. If West Kelowna wants this development in their municipality, they're more than welcome to offer up some land. ;)

It's for the greater good. :)

Cheers,
Doug

[forumdoug]

It's a great gig.
Free donated land and 9 million dollars of donated money to build a building with 50 tiny apartments in it.
180 grand a door for tiny suites that likely won't be much more than 400 sq ft each.
450 bucks a square foot.
50 units. Almost guaranteed 100% occupancy.
On your tax dollar.
Didn't cost him a cent.

I wonder when the charity leases him a new Bentley.

And it's all tax free.

That 9 million was more than enough to grease a few palms and make sure it happens.

If people started opening their eyes they'll see that there's really good money in societies no mind people having addictions.

That's the biggest load of *bleep* I've seen in awhile, WalterWhite. For starts, the land will be owned by Freedom's Door, the charity, not Tom Smithwick (one of its board members or board chair). I highly doubt that Tom Smithwick draws any salary, retainer or per-meeting fees from his attendance at board meetings. In fact, I'm willing to bet he likely donates more financially to the charity than any expense reimbursements.

Cheers,
Doug

[WalterWhite]

Lots of great ideas/suggestions - but who pays for it? Private enterprise won't touch the issue with a ten foot pole as there's practically zero ROI. No municipalities, nor the province or feds has funds to put towards the issue - and no one wants to pay more taxes to fund housing and care for a segment of society that's been looked down on since the dawn of haves vs. have nots. Look 40 minutes north to Vernon and the gong show going on there with newly permitted homeless camps now creating (big surprise) further conflict with the public, bylaw and law enforcement:

Typical "who pays for it" post/argument. Simple, construction gets funded from sale of existing KGM property (or properties). Land acquisition gets financed through existing or updated City capital plan. BC Housing to provide ongoing and expanded operating cost grants to KGM once fully operational. Given that its focus would be regional in scope, RDCO should be engaged to provide land acquisition funding to City of Kelowna by way of an across the board tax increase or parcel tax of all member municipalities to minimize tax impact to, at best, a few dollars per year on average $400-500k single family home as spread out across wider tax base. Plus, typical West Kelowna Council seems to eschew paying for such things in their classic NIMBYism would be forced, thanks to City of Kelowna's dominance on RDCO Board, to "suck it up" and have West Kelowna taxpayers pay in too. Kelowna taxpayers should not be on the hook for such things exclusively. If West Kelowna wants this development in their municipality, they're more than welcome to offer up some land. ;)

It's for the greater good. :)

Cheers,
Doug

Lol - if it's so "simple" - why hasn't it been done? Nothing simple about it whatsoever - and the "who pays" is typical because taxpayers want to know. Where is the additional funds from BC Housing coming from? Great concepts Doug - but there's no funds - and your estimate of a "few dollars per year" impact on individual property taxes is highly suspect - taxes are already high enough thanks to city of Kelowna's need for everything to be of a platinum standard to keep up the hoity-toity impression for tourists.

[forumdoug]

Lol - if it's so "simple" - why hasn't it been done? Nothing simple about it whatsoever - and the "who pays" is typical because taxpayers want to know. Where is the additional funds from BC Housing coming from? Great concepts Doug - but there's no funds - and your estimate of a "few dollars per year" impact on individual property taxes is highly suspect - taxes are already high enough thanks to city of Kelowna's need for everything to be of a platinum standard to keep up the hoity-toity impression for tourists.

Well, we've had 16+ years of a penny-pinching, favour-the-wealthy, conservative BC Liberal gov't that was, thankfully, sent from office with their office belongings & personal effects tossed to the curb nearly as fast them. So, there's that.

Perhaps we can finally get some actual spending on the folks that matter, not the fictitious mythical creature politicians have created called "the middle class" whose definition varies so widely so as to fit their target voter demographic (or demographics even!) but the working class, which I will define as those single income earners earning less than $33,000 per year or dual income households earning less than $45,000 per year. I'm disappointed the BC NDP is eliminating the tolls on the Port Man and Golden Ears bridges, especially with all the I.T. spend the BC Liberals and Translink have spent on separate revenue collection technologies. I wish they would've kept them but instead enshrined in legislation that all toll revenues, once the bridges have either been paid for or substantially paid for, be put into a separate account earmarked for public transit infrastructure and service improvements within the geographic region in which they're collected.

While I support the idea of eliminating MSP premiums, it should not be across the board. Replace it with a combination of an employer-paid payroll levy, tax-free to the employee (similar to the way WorkSafeBC premiums are collected), for those 19-65 or 19-67. For those 65 or 67 and either classified as retirees or collecting a pension (whether gov't or private), institute a separate actuarial-derived premium based on their higher usage and assess it through the provincial income tax system on Net Incomes (Line 236) over $25,000 per year for singles and $37,000 for couples.

Institute an expenditure review and a government- and Crown corporation wide FTE hiring "cap" such that existing positions can be replaced, if deemed essential, but no new position(s) (including "casual"/"temporary") created while all gov't programs are reviewed. Take the proverbial axe to arts program funding, scrap the British Columbia Arts Council, close Employment and Income Assistance offices provincewid, leaving only one regional "centre of excellence" within each broad geographic region (i.e., South Vancouver Island, North Vancouver Island, Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Northwest and Central B.C., Northeast and Eastern B.C. and Southern Interior of B.C. plus one, new provincewide contact centre that would operate 24/7/365 excluding statutory holidays and let the municipalities shower the provincial gov't with all kinds of incentives to land this important economic generator that would have, say, 100 jobs. Streamline approval and adjudication to approve all claims for assistance based solely on financial need (i.e., current or previous year's Adjusted Net Income). Pink slip thousands of provincial gov't staffers, especially in ICBC. Further close local Claims Centres and sell the Driver's Licensing Locations to private sector operators and partner with local Autoplan agents to broaden the number of ID licensing locations provincewide. Cut executive management within ICBC from God knows how many to 5-7. If further cuts are needed, cut management at LDB, BCLC, etc. You get the idea. Oh wait...reform the school board system, keep locally elected boards for certain districts but amalgamate their corporate entities into "super education authorities" (i.e., Southern Interior Education Authority, Metro Vancouver Education Authority, etc.) with one, centralized payroll department. Convert school district HQs into either elementary, middle or high schools as local demands dictate. Rent a meeting room from the lowest bidder (i.e., could be a church and their empty halls or the copious number of banquet rooms in hotels to civic facilities) for biweekly or monthly meetings of local boards. Each board of the regional education authority could have one (1) full-time administrative staff member to work for them locally, based out of an existing government office, with that government office receiving an internal transfer to cover minor costs (i.e., paper, computer, etc.) for that sole staff member. Just think...how mant school superintendents and district principals can we eliminate from public payrolls! ;)

If revenue is still needed, as I suspect thanks to an aging demographic and an anemic economy that will continue for, perhaps, decades, partner with the Bank of Canada that would see the Bank of Canada expand the total money supply (i.e., print money) in exchange for either taking equity stakes in capital infrastructure projects that it could sell later as gov't debts are paid down or provide interest-free loans to gov't. This would be modestly stimulative and inflationary to the economy and would need to be monitored monthly and curtailed suddenly if signs of hyper-inflation showed.

Have I generated enough funds for gov't yet?

If not, B.C.'s record-low corporate and small business tax rates could (and arguably should) be raised at least out of the single digits.

Cheers,
Doug

[Bpeep]

It's a great gig.
Free donated land and 9 million dollars of donated money to build a building with 50 tiny apartments in it.
180 grand a door for tiny suites that likely won't be much more than 400 sq ft each.
450 bucks a square foot.
50 units. Almost guaranteed 100% occupancy.
On your tax dollar.
Didn't cost him a cent.

I wonder when the charity leases him a new Bentley.

And it's all tax free.

That 9 million was more than enough to grease a few palms and make sure it happens.

If people started opening their eyes they'll see that there's really good money in societies no mind people having addictions.

That's the biggest load of *bleep* I've seen in awhile, WalterWhite. For starts, the land will be owned by Freedom's Door, the charity, not Tom Smithwick (one of its board members or board chair). I highly doubt that Tom Smithwick draws any salary, retainer or per-meeting fees from his attendance at board meetings. In fact, I'm willing to bet he likely donates more financially to the charity than any expense reimbursements.

Cheers,
Doug

I wrote that, not Walter.
And you aren't exactly correct in some of your other assumptions either.

[WalterWhite]

Well, we've had 16+ years of a penny-pinching *snipped for brevity*

Wow - where to start? The BC Libs may have been "penny-pinchers" in your eyes - but this sort of thinking is plain outright dangerous.Essentially, you're advocating putting thousands of medium/upper medium income earners out of work, while further increasing costs to business by having them cover employees medical costs - and you think inflation and living wages are out of whack now - just wait until corporations further have to increase end user costs while cutting employee wages to pay for it.

Further tax the elderly on a user/pay basis? wow

Amalgamate school districts into "super education authorities"? Lol - and you think there's too much top heavy management now? What sort of out of touch education system do you want where districts have but one representative? I can hear the accusations of favoritism already.

Sorry - but that's a whole lot of paragraphs of nonsense.

[workingclasshero]

why do you think the businesses on main street are suffering?
we are tired of being approached for money as soon as you approach the parking meter to pay for parking.
the old RCMP station would be a great location for a homeless shelter. why hide it
the homeless own downtown

[the truth]

correct on all counts

[GordonH]

why do you think the businesses on main street are suffering?
we are tired of being approached for money as soon as you approach the parking meter to pay for parking.
the old RCMP station would be a great location for a homeless shelter. why hide it
the homeless own downtown

It also did not help when the CoK removed half of parking spots along Bernard ave.

[Bpeep]

Downtown is overrun with homeless and aggressive beggars.
I only go downtown out of necessity, and fortunately it's not necessary often.
The city doesn't care and won't do anything about it unless the numbers flowing into city coffers decreases as a result of it, and then they'll first do an analysis to ensure the dollars spent dealing with it are cost effective.

I feel for those poor people who own property on those couple blocks of Leon. They will never realize their maximum rent potential because of the loonies who pollute the area.
But the city continues to get the taxes from them.

[forumdoug]

... snipped for brevity and/or relevance ...

Amalgamate school districts into "super education authorities"? Lol - and you think there's too much top heavy management now? What sort of out of touch education system do you want where districts have but one representative? I can hear the accusations of favoritism already.

Sorry - but that's a whole lot of paragraphs of nonsense.

First, I never advocated one (1) elected local representative. We can continue with 5-7 elected representatives that would be the elected local board for this sub-region of a larger regional authority managed from one central location. In sub-regions without the regional authority office, they would rent meeting space on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis for several hours up to one day, significantly reducing occupancy costs. As they would be located, in some cases, far from regional offices, they'd be allocated one (1) full-time staff representative who would work out of an existing government office and in an internal cost allocation transferred from one G/L to another G/L of the CRF of the Province of B.C. to allow for that square footage that separate employee is taking up (i.e., 20 square feet or so). :)

If a board is required for each regional authority, elected representatives from the local sub-regions would elect members from among themselves to the larger regional authority board, although the larger board's focus would be limited in scope to, basically, approving annual financial statements and appointing a CEO. All power and governance would rest in the sub-regions. And remember, while there'd still be 6-8 regional authorities, there'd only be one (1) payroll department for ALL regional authorities, which could be contracted out to low cost jurisdictions (i.e., Manila, Guangzhou, etc.) for even greater wringing out of costs. :)

Cheers,
Doug

[GordonH]

Downtown is overrun with homeless and aggressive beggars.
I only go downtown out of necessity, and fortunately it's not necessary often.
The city doesn't care and won't do anything about it unless the numbers flowing into city coffers decreases as a result of it, and then they'll first do an analysis to ensure the dollars spent dealing with it are cost effective.

I feel for those poor people who own property on those couple blocks of Leon. They will never realize their maximum rent potential because of the loonies who pollute the area.
But the city continues to get the taxes from them.

I've gone for walks couple times over last few months (in downtown area), there is only 2 stores even worth while shopping at & both are at east end of Bernard near Richter.
I will stick with my current grocery & drug store.

[forumdoug]

I've gone for walks couple times over last few months (in downtown area), there is only 2 stores even worth while shopping at & both are at east end of Bernard near Richter.
I will stick with my current grocery & drug store.

LOL, that's kind of true - and, while I haven't been there personally, I tend to think that end of downtown has the best bakery coffee shop (i.e., 350 Bake House, former Tripke's location). :)

Cheers,
Doug

[mrsocial]

They should move the kgm down by the airport. Perfect location!

[WalterWhite]

They should move the kgm down by the airport. Perfect location!

Yea, because they’re such frequent fliers......