NRGH - MORE TAX HIKES COMING?

 

Health Forward Summit – Who Is Saying What?

Is this really about healthcare – or about softening Nanaimo taxpayers for the next big tax hike?

By Jim Taylor

The headline from the Health Forward Summit sounded simple: Nanaimo needs better healthcare, and we need it fast. We were told our hospital is bursting at the seams and that we can’t even attract a major global container operator because we don’t have a cardiac catheterization lab.

We’re told that when Nanaimo Port Authority’s chair explained to a DP World executive that Nanaimo can’t provide access to a cath lab if one of his workers has a heart attack, the investment conversation “cooled.” The implied message: no cath lab, no serious investment, no high-paying jobs.

It’s a tidy narrative. It’s also very selective.

At the same time we’re being told investors are scared off, thousands of retirees have been moving here anyway. Nanaimo has grown “by leaps and bounds,” especially with seniors – the people most likely to need cardiac care.

So when I hear that DP World supposedly can’t take Nanaimo seriously because of one missing service, I start asking: who is saying what, and why?

Start with the tax reality. The Nanaimo Regional Hospital District (NRHD) line on your property tax bill has quietly gone from background noise to a major hit. In just a few years, the hospital levy has roughly tripled. The NRHD board – not local voters – has deliberately jacked up the requisition to build reserves and “signal” to Victoria that our region is ready to pay for a new tower, cath lab and more.

Meanwhile, the growth being waved in front of us at Duke Point isn’t the tax bonanza some suggest. The Port of Nanaimo is a federal authority. Much waterfront activity happens on lands that don’t pay normal municipal taxes, but rather payments in lieu. Even where there is taxable industrial land, the City’s revenue is based on land and building value, not how many containers move across the dock.

So we’re left with a simple question: is the Health Forward Summit really about listening to the community – or about lining up the community to quietly accept the next round of hospital tax hikes in the name of “world-class care” and “growth” that may benefit others far more than Nanaimo’s property taxpayers?