Stephen and Rebekah Jenkins

111 First St West , PO Box 950

Revelstoke, BC V0E 2S0

June 13, 2017

Dear Mayor McKee, City Councilors, and City Staff:

Stephen and I are so happy to be citizens of Revelstoke. As you may know, we sold everything we had in Seattle and made
Revelstoke our permanent home last July. We have invested our lifetime savings into The Explorers Society Hotel,
Quartermaster Eatery, and McKinnon Hall. In other words, we are All In here in Revelstoke. Initial reception to our
businesses by the community and by visitors has been positive. McKinnon Hall, our community event space, opened this
past weekend with a Style Trends Fashion Show and the Revelstoke Volunteer Firemens Dinner all with great reviews.

Our businesses are all fragile start-ups from a cash flow perspective, and we are doing everything in our power to keep
our doors open every day for our employees, visitors, and the community. The building construction project cost over
$500k more than our worst-case budget, consuming critical contingency funds, and requiring us to secure a second round
of financing to open our doors increasing our debt leverage and risk.

We are writing because we are in receipt of our 2017 property tax bills. The valuation changes have resulted in our
property tax bill jumping 70% in a single year from $12,000 to over $20,000.

To help these businesses survive their own start up and stabilize, we ask the City of Revelstoke to partner with us and
consider a temporary, 5-year municipal property tax freeze at the current 2015/2016 rates for the following reasons:

A heritage building is full of surprises. We could not have fully anticipated the total building cost. Combine this
with the cost of building in a remote location like Revelstoke, the building construction created a significant
financial burden which required us to secure additional financing. The length of time required to financially
stabilize our businesses has increased multiple years as a result.

The building, historically, had minimal effort put into maintenance. We had to invest significantly more resources
to meet code requirements than anticipated, budgeted for, or funded. A partial list included extensive structural
engineering, steel, and fasteners to stabilize the heritage building, lots of additional drywall for fire code, a high
number of washrooms, a host of mechanical and ventilation requirements, and an elevator to allow our roof deck
to be handicapped accessible. These were each major (required) investments that trigger higher property
evaluations and higher property tax.

We did not come forward asking for tax relief at the start of the project for two reasons. First, we wanted to invest
first and clearly demonstrate our commitment before asking for any assistance which recognized our
commitment. Second, we were unaware that the project would incur so many extremely expensive steps to bring
this building up to code. These unanticipated steps are now levers that are driving our BC Assessment and
resulting Municipal property tax rates higher.

In order to meet the City 21 space parking requirement , we entered a lease and partnership agreement with CP
Rail, the first ever to be done. We pay over $900 per month for this parking to meet the City requirements. In
addition, we were unaware that there would also be property tax due on this parking lot, now assessed at $95,400,
or $2,592 annually. Combined, parking costs us over $13,000 per year.

To date, we have hired 42 people and have not laid anyone off. We aim to hire staff and keep them throughout
the year without extended closures. Our operations are year-round, not seasonal.
 To construct the property, we invested a large amount of money with local Revelstoke businesses of many forms.
These investments continue locally as we operate our businesses.

We fully restored an important downtown heritage building that now has another 100 years of life. Perhaps, our
project is the largest heritage remodel in the history of Revelstoke. It is common to buy older buildings and paint
them, but not necessarily improve their infrastructure or services. A significant contributor could be property tax
escalation. This inconsistency does not encourage revitalization of the downtown core and at some point will
become an issue as the services and buildings age and decline. This is not in Revelstokes best interest. A
proactive plan for ensuring the preservation of our beautiful heritage buildings is a must for a sustainable
tourism future. We volunteer to be part of an initiative to make this happen.

We do not pay ourselves. Both businesses are operated as start-ups with a focus simply on breaking even and
retiring debt versus profitability.

We have added 4 new and unique downtown event spaces to the community that we have seen strong demand
for to date.

We want our building and all the businesses in it, to be one of the reasons people come to Revelstoke. We have
big plans to bring more groups to the area to spend money not just with us, but with all downtown businesses.
Our goal is to help lead economic development in Revelstokes downtown core.

We are not asking for a Provincial Property Tax adjustment. We are asking for a freeze on the Municipal portion
of our taxes at their 2015/16 amount. Our building is not making more of an impact on City Services than it did
previously. The areas we do impact, we pay for, e.g. the water (and the upgraded main), sewer and utilities.

We are not asking for the City to receive less revenue than previous years for our commercial property. We are
asking the City to help lower our risk of business failure by freezing the municipal taxes for a temporary period of
time.

Finally, the carrying costs of the building, hotel and the restaurant in the Revelstoke cyclical economy are significant. 5
months of tourist income, but a 12-month set of carrying costs. The combination of debt payments, property tax, utilities,
water, parking, payroll, insurance and more is difficult for our start-up businesses and compounded given the additional
debt we had to take to reach completion. The market will only bear so much of this financial strain. We have our hotel
and restaurant prices where we think consumers will still choose to enjoy them. Our initial start-up and stabilization
projections of 5 years have grown to 8. The escalating property taxes with these new higher valuations add business risk
and could up-end our businesses.

The current 2015/2016 property taxes are approximately $12K. They have been at this level for several years. We are
asking for a freeze of the municipal portion at this rate versus asking for full tax relief (which would frankly be more helpful)
because it would negatively impact the Citys revenue and budget.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter. We are so thankful for such a supportive community and beautiful location
to run our businesses and call our home. We look forward to discussing further with you.

Sincerely,

Stephen and Rebekah Jenkins