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Council moves strike rebate into parks maintenance

WHITE ROCK - An estimated $80,000 rebate for taxpayers stemming from the civic worker strike has been redirected into parks maintenance after it was decided the number was too low to be worth sending out cheques.

"The rebate would be less than $10 per taxpayer and it's not worth mailing it outwith a dollar a stamp and the cost of an envelope," said Coun. Grant Meyer. "All the parks deteriorate a bit during this time of year so we thought it would be good to put it back into that."Luckily the strike settled relatively quickly, if it had gone longer and it was more like $50 dollars per taxpayer that would have been more worthy of sending out cheques. Of course, that all goes by the assessment amount."Mayor Wayne Baldwin said given the assessment values of the city's various property owners some would have received more and others less."We have in excess of about 8,000 taxpayers, and because of the variance given by assessed value, some people would be getting maybe a dollar," he said. "So it would be silly to send out cheques when the value is worth less than the postage."Baldwin said it also might not have beenfair to some, as some made more efforts than others to deal with the labour dispute, which halted garbage pickup, recreational functions and parks and road maintenance for most of May."It seemed to be inequitable in some degree because people had gone to quite substantial lengths to get rid of their garbage and others just held onto it until the strike was over, so that doesn't represent a true reflection of their expenses," said Baldwin.