Imagine the audacity of anyone questioning how City staff calculate the increase in the budget, tax levy or the adjusted blend of budget, taxes, assessment growth, mean temperature and the cost of living. Being an accountant I was always slightly annoyed when people would say ‘Figures lie and liars figure’ as if accountants were the only ones who played with numbers to justify their actions. To quote Mark Twain, “There are lies, damn lies and statistics!” It seems there are now tax increase percentages that fall within one of those categories if we are to believe either the CAO or the Taxpayers Association.
I liked the response of “that is the way we have always done it.” Isn’t there some old saw about the definition of repeating something over and over and expecting a different result? That is almost as confounding as saying we need to keep the same level of service and must increase our budget to provide that level of service. Maybe it is now time to pause and re-think what we are doing in this city.
Basing our property taxes on the assessment has been the way to calculate the mill rate for ages and it did seem to be an equitable way to assess taxes - the more valuable your property, the more you ought to be able to pay for the community services. And while our assessment base has grown in the past year (partially due to inflationary forces in real estate) our population has stagnated and perhaps even decreased. We need some of those lies, er, statistics to give us the real figures.
But what would happen if we calculated our tax levy based on the number of people who live in our city?
Consider that many of the services the City supplies are to people, not to houses. Roads, sewer and water, recreational facilities are for people. The fire department does try to save foundations as well as people and are concerned with saving property in case of a spreading fire whereas the police are concerned with people, not property - except when it involves automobiles with faulty lights or bent fenders. Social Services work with people although they may have some concerns with safe and clean apartments. The Parking people attach tickets to vehicles but it is the person who pays the bill.
Of course there is the old bugaboo about the ability to pay versus user pay. We would need some levelling factor based on ability and usage so we could implement a fixed and variable factor when it comes to calculating the actual tax bill. Something similar to the proposed new water billing system - fixed and variable costs. However, when it comes time to set the budget for city operations a simple per capita number might be enlightening. In fact, as our population decreases as people leave the City to find work, it might be downright shocking to see that number.
We need to do something to reign in the costs of living in a small city that currently has no prospect of real growth. Either we find a niche for jobs, or try to sustain our present level of employment and cost of living in the City. All the trees, lakes and fresh air will not bring new jobs. Those attributes can be found by hopping in a vehicle and driving on our wonderful 4-lane highway from southern Ontario. Please stop pretending that companies will locate here because we have nice drinking water.
It is time to get out of our comfortable box, ask questions, and get this City back on track. Sorry, poor pun for those few ONR employees left in town
