Saanich is the largest municipality on Vancouver Island in both area and population but seems to chug along without throwing its weight around.
Compared to Victoria, it can be viewed as a more affluent suburban/rural neighbour that鈥檚 off the financial hook for core issues such as homelessness or the $105-million Johnson Street Bridge saga or the lion鈥檚 share of responsibility for regional assets such as Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
A snapshot and its day-to-day workings is detailed in the recently released 2016 Annual Report, with 96 pages of nuts and bolts from who pays the highest business taxes to the number of graffiti calls that came in to per-capita water consumption.
鈥淚 think Saanich has a lot to be proud of,鈥� said Mayor Richard Atwell. 鈥淎 lot of measures look quite good. What鈥檚 more important is 鈥榓re the things that the residents are interested in鈥� and get the metrics for those. Where we haven鈥檛 met the targets, we need to get a concrete action plan.鈥�
