When Will Richter Lash Out?

The Township of Langley budget process is in full swing and staff have tried their best to work with all the revenue numbers, projects to be funded, unfunded, etc. In the first budget meeting Councillor Kim Richter accused staff of trying to promote a tax increase when they prepared various models of the numbers. Apparently Richter hasn't much indepth knowledge of budgets, as this is a normal part of the business budgetting proces.

Cllr. Richter also took opportunity during that same meeting to attack Colin Wright, Manager of Engineering for the Township. Mr. Wright is a well-qualified engineer and he simply stated that the ToL has a tremendous amount of roads and other infrastructure assets that require ongoing maintenance and upgrades to protect these valuable assets. In the past, budget cuts simply postponed this asset management and caused huge problems that required catch up later. Mr. Wright communicated a well-known fact that a response to a crisis costs much more (sometimes 25-50% more) than simply maintaining assets.

Councillor Richter loves to order off the extensive menu, but she always seems to skip out when the bill is coming. One of our editors is doing the research, but we've found that many council colleagues are tired of her promoting various projects and causes, only to vote against the final budget. We fully expect Councillor Kim Richter to vote against this budget. Although it will be packaged as something that it is not, you can be sure her vote will be purely for political reasons and most certainly for self-promotion.