Dyas commits to independent audit of city’s finances

September 14, 2022

KELOWNA — Kelowna Mayoral Candidate Tom Dyas has announced that as Kelowna’s next Mayor he would commit to hiring an external third-party to undertake a line-by-line audit of the City’s finances.

“Over the last eight years property taxes have increased 30% and development charges have increased by tens of thousands of dollars — yet we haven’t seen drastic improvements to infrastructure or services as a result,” said Kelowna Mayoral Candidate Tom Dyas. “An independent third-party audit of the City’s finances will allow us to re-examine our spending and provide us with ways to modernize and improve Kelowna’s service delivery, while saving money and maintaining or improving service levels.”

Over the last four years, the 39 largest municipalities in Ontario have conducted similar audits with costs for the audits ranging between $50,000 to a maximum of $200,000 per municipality, however the savings found have been extraordinary. Through a financial audit, the City of Richmond Hill (population 200,000) found savings of $3.77 million and the City of Thunder Bay (population 110,000) found savings of $8 million — all without cuts to services.

“As a small business owner myself, I’ve had to make payroll and pay businesses expenses for over 37 years, and I know the importance of stretching every dollar and truly considering the return on investment of additional spending,” said Dyas. “Any large corporation, like a municipality, should conduct external audits of their finances in regular intervals in order to determine if they’re getting value out of their spending, it’s business-grounded solutions like this that will save taxpayers money and allow us to provide additional services without new taxes.”