View from the Cheap Seats is an extension of the newsroom, which is frequently a site of heated debate on topics ranging from the extremely serious to the utterly ridiculous. This web edition features the views of print edition columnists Thom Barker (Wednesday) and Calvin Daniels (Friday), as well as web exclusive content by Devin Wilger (Thursday).
This week: What is the number one issue in the upcoming municipal elections?
Property tax
This one is easy for me. Residential property tax.
This year it appears the business community has gone activist. The Chamber of Commerce came out early with a number of “talking points” one of which is to “narrow the gap” between commercial and residential property taxes, which is code for making already beleaguered home owners pay even more.
And it looks like they managed to get some candidates onto the ballot who are making some frighteningly business-friendly noises.
As a residential property tax payer, this is scary because residential property taxes have been going up in recent years by about four times the rate of personal incomes. Shifting the burden even further onto residential taxpayers is both unfair and unsustainable.
Yorkton is already more than competitive with other jurisdictions with respect to taxes and benefits to business. Furthermore, businesses should pay more and not just a little more, because businesses benefit more from the things, such as infrastructure and amenities, that most of our taxes pay for.
Not only that, but in its “talking point” the Chamber disingenuously says business taxes went up 6.9 per cent. In fact, it was the mill rate that went up (and it was 6.42 per cent not 6.9). The real increase was significantly less for most businesses (and a decrease for some) because of a downward adjustment in commercial assessments.
Furthermore, residential ratepayers have to pony up a $710 base tax and $100 Gallagher Centre fee businesses do not have to pay.
You can bet I will not be casting my ballot for the “run the city like a business” crowd. A city is not a business and should be run like a city for the benefit of all residents, not for corporate enrichment.
Now, if you want to talk shifting the burden from small business to big business, I am all ears.
-Thom Barker
Roads and drains and drains and roads
The next council is going to be looking at the exact same problems the current council is looking at. The city has an old drainage system that still doesn’t work completely right – witness the flooding at McDonalds yet again – and while that system has gotten better since the work started it’s still nowhere near done. I’m not going to knock the work the city has done on drainage thus far, especially since my house has been drier this summer than it has in previous years so I’m right in the area where the new infrastructure works fine, but it’s clear that the work itself is not finished. Part of doing that work will, by necessity, involve tearing up Broadway. The current council knows it, any candidate worth voting for knows it, the infrastructure under the street is a mess and cleaning up that mess is going to a problem for the next council. Broadway reconstruction is probably going to be the big issue for the next several councils, actually, given that it’s a massive project that is going to affect everyone in the city, and it’s also going to be horribly expensive and take several years to actually complete. And it can’t be avoided because the infrastructure under Broadway is a total mess – again, look at flooding at McDonalds for an example.
But there are roads in the city that will need extensive repairs or rebuilds that have nothing to do with McDonalds, and there are drainage problems in areas that are not McDonalds adjacent. It’s just this year’s big example of how there’s still work to be done. It happens to be the same work that needed to be done for the past several years, and will probably be the same work that needs to be done for the council after this one. A lot of the other infrastructure in the city is either recently upgraded or otherwise invisible until it goes wrong, but everyone sees a road every day – often a deteriorating one – and the visual of a flooded street lights up social media every time it happens. Municipal politics in Yorkton will be defined by roads and drains for the foreseeable future.
-Devin Wilger
Expectations
Whoever voters choose from among the myriad of candidates on Oct. 26, there is one major issue the new Council will need to deal with over their four-year term, and that is voter expectation.
We live in an era where everyone looks to government, all three levels, expecting more and more from their tax dollars.
In Yorkton we should be aware by now that aging infrastructure will demand a growing level of funding to repair and replace moving forward. Sidewalks, asphalt, sewer and water lines across much of the city are well past expected years of service. Such work will require millions, a redo of Broadway Street has been estimated at near $50 million.
Flood events in the last decade have had the City reacting to resident concerns investing again millions in water retention ponds and similar infrastructure designed to mitigate future high rainfall events. More investment is planned.
But voices in the community have also been heard calling for additional firefighters, incentives to attract more business, more RCMP, paved walking paths, a third ice surface, and the list goes on and on.
There are however finite revenue sources for a local municipality, almost exclusively relying on property tax, and there are certainly limits ratepayers will be accepting of in terms of year after year increases.
Managing the needed expenditures, with the wanted expectations, in balance with reasonable tax hikes, will challenge whoever is elected later this month.
-Calvin Daniels
