The Yorkton Chamber of Commerce hosted a town hall style meeting last week with regards to the massive tax hikes that small business owners have been on the receiving end of this year. What we have is an imperfect storm of a provincial government cutting costs, an agency (SAMA) that had some imperfections when compiling numbers as far as getting the information out in a more timely manner, and a city government looking to find ways to pay for all the services that are, seemingly, downloaded on to them more and more with each passing year. I sympathize with everyone involved, but small businesses are what drives our economies in small cities like Yorkton. When we make it too hard for them to survive, we run the risk of destroying our city. Frequent readers of my column are familiar with my philosophy of needing more people paying tax instead of the same people paying more tax. When you tax the current small business people more, some of them will decide it’s too hard to make ends meet so they’ll just close up shop. And, that $25,000 tax revenue that the city received last year ends up being $0 instead of $45,000 this year. That’s the risk here. It’s not the city’s fault. That’s not where I’m assigning the blame. But, all stakeholders need to put their heads together and find a solution. As I listened to the speakers at last Wednesday’s forum, I wondered to myself if it’s possible to charge non-Yorkton residents more money for using Yorkton services. Should the price for an out-of-town group to swim at the Gallagher Centre, be more money? Yorkton people paid for this amenity, so why should someone from outside Yorkton use it for the same price? Should there be a $1 per room tax assigned to all hotel rooms sold in this city? To me, those are two ways of the city getting more revenue without hammering its own citizens for it.
MLA Greg Ottenbreit, who’s undergoing some serious medical treatment, was able to attend and speak at this meeting. I think it’s well worth mentioning, because it wasn’t a feel good affair. An MLA, on a good day, isn’t eager to get up in front of a group of unhappy people; yet Ottenbreit did it under less than ideal personal health conditions. Without getting into the nuts and bolts, I stand by most of my criticism about how the Province communicated with all of us before their budget was released; but it’s difficult to argue with a lot of the decisions the made and I still haven’t seen any of the critics offer concrete solutions. The only thing I can think of is fewer social programs that may result in people being forced to enter the workforce. I recognize there are a lot of challenges with that, though.
Three men have been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for, at least, 25 years in relation to the murder of Shawn Douglas. Douglas was a 54-year-old journeyman pipefitter, who ended up at the wrong party and got robbed and, eventually, beaten to death. The details of how he died were reported on extensively in the Regina media. It really bothers me that human beings can be so sadistic. I can’t imagine doing anything near this to my worst enemy. How do you it to a stranger?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. CBC had a story last week about a dog that was shot near Yorkton and was wandering around injured for days before getting rescued by Carmen Brezinski, who raised money so that the innocent creature could undergo an operation to try and save his limb. The early results indicate a, potential, happy ending but the pooch isn’t out of the woods yet. Who does this stuff and how can you be so cruel and then carry on with your day and life like nothing at all? In the Douglas case, the men that beat the guy to death went to Subway afterwards as if they had just left a bar and had munchies. I feel it’s time to really get tough on crimes against animals. The deterrent just isn’t strong enough for it stop. We are hearing more and more horror stories with each passing day.
For those that have access to some US television programming, I would encourage you to watch ESPN’s Outside The Lines and the story of Niko Kollias. To this point, I’ve only read the story and haven’t watched; but if the visual story is as dramatic as the written one, it will give you big time chills. Kollias was a big 6’1”, 220 lbs defensive lineman, who was playing college football in Rochester, New York. Long story short, he accepts a friend request from a woman on Facebook and ends up getting tortured for 40 hours. It’s worse than any nightmare, but incredibly captivating and a lesson for all people (not just young teenagers) to be very careful on social media.
Nice person mentions this week: Candace Mitschke-Hiller, Jaimie Malmgren, Rob Shopland, and Nancy Johnson.
