Dear Editor;
My name is Zvika Anosh and I live with my family in the County of Ponoka. The designation of our property in the County of Ponoka is: SE 9-43-25-4. We were informed recently that the Town of Ponoka has made an application to annex the land, which we live on. We also participated in a public meeting, which the Town of Ponoka had organized to hear the people who were affected by this possible annexation.
The meeting-in my opinion-was very short, too short. Just an hour and a half for a magnitude of about 140 families being affected. The information was very poorly presented on maps that you could not see any details and sketchy at best. In short, the meeting was used to give people a way to vent but not deal with any issues. We were not able to get answers to our questions, problems or concerns. So we decided to write you an official request for your response and measures to remedy what we see as a serious interference in our way of life, which we choose-which was not to be part of the town.
We oppose this annexation because of the following reasons: 1. Water-We have our water supply and we do not want to be forced to spend any funds now or in the future in order to be connected to the Town of Ponoka water system or to be forced to be connected to their water system.
2. Sewer-We have our sewer system and do not want to be forced to spend any funds now or in the future, in order to be part of the sewer system of the Town of Ponoka or to be connected to their sewer system.
3. Taxes-We are very happy to be part of the County of Ponoka and wish to continue to be part of the county. We are worried that the taxes of the Town of Ponoka will be higher than what we (the people of the county) are paying.
4. Public debts- We do not wish to be part of an organization (The Town of Ponoka) which has big debts and want us-new potential arrivals-to the town, if this annexation will go through-to pay for their debts. We don’t think that we should pay their debts, which have been gathering in the past 50 years.
5. Garbage disposal-currently, we are happy using the county garbage disposal services and we do not wish to change that. In the event of the annexation succeeding we fear we will be faced with a garbage disposal levy and related charges and transfer station taxes, which we are opposed to.
I believe the Town of Ponoka should tell the public what are their real intentions, about their budgets, debts, amounts, schedule of payments and how do they propose to pay it before they are asking to force people to join their town. It should be done now ... so it can be paid by the people of the town or anybody and not by the people of the County of Ponoka. We will try and seek any help in order to make sure that these five issues will be dealt with and we are interested to know how you can help us to insure these problems will not fall on our shoulders and pockets.
Please provide details regarding an appeal process and ways for us to stop the annexation an/or remedies to the issues we raised in this letter. Please provide details regarding all applicable by laws and regulations pertaining to the issues we have raised in this letter.
The Town of Ponoka has 4,500 acres under its belt already (that is more than half an acre per person in Ponoka) and it is not developing with it even a growth of one per cent ... maybe 0.6 per cent a year, why do they need an extra 3,500 acres from the county, almost 90 per cent growth in land size? If the town has problems growing as it is, how will an increase in land remedy it when they don’t deal successfully with issues they have already?
Thank you for your attention,
Zvika Anosh and Phill Stirling