The public meeting to review the City of Rossland’s 2017-2021 Financial Plan has been set for next week.

Rosslanders are invited to Rossland City Hall on Thursday, May 4 at 6 p.m. to review the city’s five-year financial plan and provide input to the mayor and city councillors.

Council approved a second and third reading of the plan at Monday’s council meeting, after a couple of small changes had been made following council’s first reading.

During the first reading, Mayor Kathy Moore had noticed that the table showing the proposed distribution of property taxes among property classes for 2017 didn’t seem correct. It turned out that the category of Light Industry had previously been missing from the table, and the numbers in the first draft of the table were incorrect.

The table approved Monday night is as follows:

Residential — 87.83 per cent

Utility — 2.70 per cent

Light Industry — o.11 per cent

Business and Other — 8.87 per cent

Managed Forest — 0.03 per cent

Recreation/Non-Profit — 0.46 per cent

Farm — 0.00 per cent

The 2017 Municipal Tax Rate Bylaw was also updated to include the 2017 West-Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital District Tax Rate, as they hadn’t been available and the previous draft used 2016 numbers.

After combining the 2017 municipal tax rate, the Regional District Kootenay Boundary tax rate and the hospital tax rate, the total tax rate for a residential property is 9.71808 and the total business (and other) tax rate is 18.75285.

Mayor disappointed with regional Canada 150 celebration

During her member’s report, Mayor Moore said that she was disappointed by the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary’s (RDKB) decision to hold the regional Canada 150 celebration, to which Rossland has contributed $1,000, on Canada Day.

“I find that really unfortunate, because all of the communities do something on Canada Day and so we’ve now just given $1,000 away to Trail to do the kinds of things that they do anyway, when we are looking to do a large celebration in Rossland with our museum,” she said.

Moore asked Coun. Lloyd McLellan, who is the City of Rossland’s representative to the RDKB, to convey her disappointment.

CAO with city for one year

Moore also pointed out during her member’s report that Bryan Teasdale, CAO and CO for the City of Rossland, has now been in his position for a year and is due for a review.

Council’s personnel subgroup will look at tools for reviewing CAOs and come back to council with review forms to fill out, which will then be collated.

“And then we’ll sit down with Bryan and tell him what a great job he’s doing,” said Moore.