Dear Editor:
Re: City Triggers Lower Lonsdale BIA Process, July 20.
I read in the North Shore News the City of North Vancouver mayor and councillors’s approval of a “negative option” Business Improvement Area that requires 50 per cent (or more) of businesses to vote against.
When I was before the council, we requested a rollback of our taxes and was told by the then financial manger that it was in the city charter that no property can be lowered or increased taxes. So I can not understand how you can apply an additional tax based on geography?
We are a not-for-profit society, we already pay more than $19,000 on our taxes and don’t get the services we pay for. This BIA tax will increase our taxation load by more than $1,200 a year. The plans for the use of the funds will never augment our business; we are not a commercial gym, we practise an esoteric and difficult budo (Japanese martial way) which only appeals to a narrow demographic and is not in any way driven by advertising. We depend upon our self-selecting membership and donations to survive. We do not have contracts of any kind and have no intention to change our business model just to pay this outrageous and unjustifiable money grab.
We are owner-operators of this building and business and we have no one to pass the costs onto. Rather, it is mayor and councillors who are trying to download the cost of maintenance, which is barely provided for our 100-block of East First Street, onto small businesses that are barely surviving.
In conclusion, it is very telling that the mayor and council have chosen to make it a negative option. If the vote were based on 50 per cent Yes, it would never happen. And it is obvious why they have chosen this way to impose this additional tax via a process that seeks to download the cost of maintenance onto the backs of small businesses.
As they are being so cavalier with seemingly breaching the city charter, then I guess they can also do the same and make exemptions to this tax for businesses like us that cannot afford it and for those that will derive absolutely no benefit from this “taxation without representation” by anyone’s definition.
Joel Posluns, chief instructor
North Vancouver Aikikai
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