B.C. Ferries should take a lesson from the City of Victoria about Chinese ­workmanship.

PCL Construction, the general ­contractor for the construction of the Johnson Street Bridge, awarded the ­contract for the fabrication of the steel to a Chinese company.

The steel was rejected right at the beginning for substandard workmanship, poor steel quality and poor welding ­quality.

This caused major delays in completion of the bridge. Buyer beware.

Tom Sims

Victoria

Re: “Undervaluation of sites could be costing B.C. millions in taxes,” June 14.

The article points a finger at ­municipalities for not appealing ­under-assessed properties on the ­premise that they are losing out on ­millions of property taxes.

The truth is that most often a municipality could not care less about an ­individual property assessment.

Here is why: A municipality determines their spending budget and then their revenue sources. Property taxes make up the largest portion of their revenue.

Then, council determines the amount of property taxes they wish to collect from each property class: residential, business, industry, etc.

The finance director will go through elaborate calculations to establish the tax rates, but at the end of the day, the council decides or at least is aware of the percentage of tax to be collected from each class.

So now the desired dollars from each class is known, it is........

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