1.Property tax bills may not be due by July after all.
Surrey City Council is set to vote on whether payments should be deferred at this Monday’s council meeting.
Earlier this month Mayor McCallum shot down Councillor Linda Annis’s motion to push back the due date saying the city was already working with the province, but it appears he’s had a change of heart.
She is hopeful it will get passed this time around.
“It’s something certainly within the city`s mandate that we can do and we need to get on with it. So many people have lost their jobs, anything we can do to alleviate some of the financial burden is the prudent thing to be doing.”
Port Coquitlam and Kelowna have already deferred payment dates to the fall.
As for South of the Fraser, Langley’s property tax is still due July 2nd however the penalty after the July due date has been decreased from 6.67% to 1.83%.
In Delta, the payment deadline remains July 2nd and the penalty rate remains at around 5%.
2.Don’t expect cameras to be installed in cemetery’s anytime soon.
Numerous tombstones were recently vandalized at the the Surrey Centre Cemetery, with Surrey Historical Society President Michael Gibbs calling on the city to install cameras to avoid another incident.
However in a press release sent to Pulse FM the city said:
“Given the information we have and the rarity of vandalism at City’s Cemeteries it is unlikely that the City would deem video surveillance as necessary at this time. Please note that our Cemetery staff have taken a proactive approach to prevent future vandalism, through the restoration of these monuments by fastening a steel rod through the monument into its base that would prevent future damage to this upright headstones.”
The last act of vandalism at the cemetery was 25 years ago.
4. As of today (Friday) the market for assault weapons in Canada is closed.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday morning the government is banning the use and trade of about 15-hundred military grade assault weapons.
He cited numerous mass shootings, from the 1989 massacre at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique to the murders of 22 people in Nova Scotia last month.
Trudeau says some guns have legitimate uses but that — quote — “you don’t need an A-R-15 to bring down a deer.”