That was the idea behind a special meeting at the Seniors Center in Quesnel on Tuesday(Nov 17) night.
Quesnel City Council is proposing an aggressive tax framework over the next three years that would see residential taxes go up by 7.7 percent per year.
It would include a tax freeze for major and light industry which would shift more of the taxes onto residential and business ratepayers.
Mayor Bob Simpson says the idea is to make the city less reliant on industry in the event of another mill closure and more attractive for investment.
He says industry pays approximately 60 percent of the tax bill right now and they’d like to get that down to 50 percent to make the community more appealing.
Simpson says the bulk of the tax increase however, 5 percent, would go into the Capital Reinvestment Program.
Simpson says the impact on residential taxpayers will be in the neighborhood of an additional 110 dollars per 100 thousand of assessment over the next three years, although he says Council is still going to work to try to get that number down.
He says this is just the start of the process as the 2016 budget doesn’t have to be finalized until May.
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