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David Burke dburke@whistlerquestion.com

Whistler – Whistler lawmakers this week approved five-year property tax exemptions on four facilities, two of them of the Olympic variety, over the strident objections of two elected leaders, one of whom protested that the 2010 Games organizing committee “is not a charitable or philanthropic organization.”

By a 4-2 vote, with Councillors Nancy Wilhelm-Morden and Eckhard Zeidler dissenting, Council approved tax exemptions amounting to a total of some $600,000 per year on the Whistler Sliding Centre, the Whistler athletes’ centre, the Whistler Mountain Ski Club and the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre.

Councillor Ralph Forsyth was absent from the meeting.

By far the largest exemption, $517,659 in 2008, was for the sliding centre, a figure which Chief Administrative Officer Bill Barratt said he believed was based on the value of the centre’s land near the base of Blackcomb Mountain.

Still, Mayor Ken Melamed — who spoke and voted in favour of granting the exemptions — said he thought that figure was high and asked Barratt to check the figure with B.C. Assessment. Barratt agreed to do that.

Melamed also asked Barratt why staff was seeking a five-year exemption and not a three-year one, which he said would allow those operating the facilities one full year of operations after the Olympics. Barratt said it’s common practice in such situations to have at least three years of normal operations to gauge the accuracy of a facility’s preliminary business plan.

While no one objected to granting the exemption of approximately $7,000 per year for the Whistler Mountain Ski Club, both Zeidler and Wilhelm-Morden objected to the exemptions for the two Olympic facilities and for the First Nations centre.

Most specifically, Wilhelm-Morden took issue with exempting the two Olympic facilities, at least until after the Games. That, she said, is because they are currently owned by the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee (VANOC). Only after the Games will they become the property of the not-for-profit Olympic Legacies Society.

“It seems to me we’ve got this backwards,” Wilhelm-Morden said. “I would consider giving an exemption in 2011. These facilities are owned by VANOC… which is not a charitable or philanthropic organization.

“Our primary partnership is with the people who elected us.”

Zeidler agreed. He said that while he wishes the Spo7ez Society, which operates the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, every success in the endeavour, he couldn’t grant the exemption, even though he knows they have financial challenges. Barratt said those include a $14 million capital debt.

“Just because they have challenges, I can see no reason why we should bring our taxpayers along for the ride,” Zeidler said.

Zeidler said exempting VANOC from property taxes on the two Olympic facilities amounts to a downloading of responsibilities from senior levels of government.

“We have to do our job and let other levels of government do their jobs… if we call this sports development, and if that’s going to be downloaded to the municipal level, God help us.”

Melamed argued that the Olympic-related tax exemptions represent an acknowledgement of the long-term value of the two facilities to the resort, inasmuch as they will bring high-performance athletes to live and train in Whistler.

“I don’t think this is at a cost to the taxpayer,” Melamed said. “We are investing in putting heads in beds, in becoming a national training centre.”

Councillor Bob Lorriman said that if the exemption weren’t granted, the provincial government would have the authority to simply take the facilities off the tax roll and the result would be the same, except that provincial officials might be miffed at having to do that.

“What kind of message does that send to the Province, our partners?” Lorriman said.

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