Kamloops among BC cities soaking up provincial duties

Taxpayers will foot the bill either way, but it’s becoming less clear who’s responsible for a city’s housing and health care in BC.

Cities are taking direct action on tasks outside their responsibility, while decrying downloading from provincial and federal governments. For places like Kamloops, there’s no sign the spending on projects outside council’s responsibility is going to slow.

“The challenge is, and we all know this, you can advocate so sooner or later they’ll listen, but at the same time, we have the community at our door holding our feet to the fire,” Coun. Kelly Hall said.

Earlier this year, Hall spurred an initiative that could have the city open its own medical clinic amid a dearth of family doctors in the city. He emulated the idea from a Vancouver Island community.

A recent BC Business Council report examined city hall spending across the province, finding many have grown their budgets beyond population growth and inflation, steadily increasing costs on taxpayers for more than a decade.

Not all cities have seen their budgets outpace growth. Some, like Kamloops and Kelowna, are better off. But, the two Interior cities are far from immune to the temptation of picking up the tab from where higher levels of government left off.

“Mayors and councils across BC, Kamloops included, have stepped into places where residents have said, Holy crap, we need help.’ The community safety file is just one of them. Municipalities have stepped in where the province has not,” said Jeremy Heighton, who leads both the North Kamloops and the BC business improvement associations.

With particular focus on homelessness and public safety, he said city councils are responding to demands from residents and businesses when the province can’t solve the problems facing BC cities.

“There’s less of an incentive on the business side to pay high tax bills if you’re not seeing community response to homelessness or increased police presence or other things that aren’t allowing you to operate in a fulsome way.”

The province has bolstered social housing supply in recent years and introduced new measures to deal with chronic offenders and the most difficult to house, for example, but it hasn’t stopped Kamloops from taking on its own initiatives.

Beyond the proposed medical clinic, some Kamloops bylaw officers are now recognized as peace officers and the city started a non-profit land trust to spur housing projects.

According to Hall, the widened scope of city hall responsibilities came out of recognizing what the community needed.

“As a city, we’re probably going to veer out of our lane a little bit because we have to,” he said. “It’s not that we want to spend taxpayers dollars outside the traditional scope, it’s just that when you take a look at the lack of support we’re getting from the provincial government and the downloading, you have to look at it and ask what is best for the community.”

Asked about the expanded spending scope at BC city halls, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation agreed with the BC Business Council. Spokesperson Carson Binda said the province should reinstate the auditor tasked with overseeing municipal spending.

“We used to have an independent auditor general for local governments whose job it was to comb through government financials to give best practice recommendations, to investigate and publish reports on financial mismanagement. Unfortunately, this provincial government defunded and eliminated that office altogether,” he said. “They claimed it was because municipalities didn’t support having extra oversight.”

He also said city halls taking on more responsibilities, especially in health care, is an ample opportunity to overspend.

“That kind of downloading of costs puts incredible pressure on municipal budgets and also duplicates a lot of bureaucracy that already exists at the provincial level,” he said.