July 22 2004

"If you want it, you have to pay for it!"

With those words ringing in the ears of those people who stuck it out to the bitter end about 100 survivors filed out of a meeting on Monday 19th July. The meeting was held to allow people to bring their concerns about 'Market Value Assessment' (MVA) to the Town officials and also give them an opportunity to ask the experts questions.

The meeting did neither: people are still gravely concerned about MVA and even more importantly nobody's anger was assuaged by this meeting. If anything the way the meeting was conducted and the format used exacerbated frustration. "That's the biggest load of bullshit I have heard in a long time!" was one comment I heard muttered by a person leaving the hall; obviously an unsatisfied participant.

The format of the meeting was designed to defuse the anticipated crowd's anger and it was successful in only one respect - there were no confrontations between aggrieved taxpayers and the presenters. It was the usual setup: bore the audience stiff with PowerPoint presentations and speeches from politicians and bureaucrats with dull dry explanations and then allow token interactivity. Written questions were entertained and those questions were grouped by the front panel so that no question was repeated.

It worked, a number of people left before the questions were asked and many left during the Q&A, only half the room was left at the end. But those who stayed were enlightened about the way assessment works in a hot and cold housing market. Although some of the answers left out a hard truth. In answering the question, "Will the assessment on my house go down when the housing market drops" the response was, "Yes!". But left unsaid was the fact that the Town's tax rate would go up during that time to make sure that tax revenues remained the same.

As Deputy Mayor Spooner took credit for organising the meeting, against all bureaucratic opposition, he has a responsibility to say what comes next - he was silent. So what does come next?

MPAC says they need more time to do more assessment and handle all the consequent appeals. The Town still refers all claims about high taxes to MPAC blaming high increases on high assessment and the Province says they are doing something!

When Mr Rinaldi was interviewed he said that a Liberal caucus committee is looking at alternative ways of municipal financing. When asked if this committee will report to the public or hold public hearings he refused to say and would only say, "I will tell you what they do"

When the Town was asked about changing the practice of recapturing the tax increase, for those taxpayers on automatic billing, in a shortened tax year period to one used by utility companies (estimating the increase and amortizing it over the full yearly billing period), the answer was, "We can't do that as we are not allowed to collect this year's taxes in next year's period."

August 4th 2004
The notes above were written before the various letters to the paper from citizens who are convinced that that it is the Councils' fault that property taxes are so high.

In response to those people who are convinced that new growth will provide the tax money needed to dilute the tax demand and therefore lead to lower taxes let me say that you are all wet!!

Property tax is not the way to finance municipalities. The demand for services is always with us and those services cost money. If the people who are complaining about high taxes, and most of them are newcomers, had done their homework they would have discovered before, not after, coming here that Cobourg living is expensive - we have services (isn't that why they came here in the first place?) that have to be paid for. Bellyaching doesn't compensate for not doing due diligence!

The other flaw in the argument for more growth ignores the fact that development charges and annual taxes on each new home will not pay for the expanded services needed to accommodate the new population. A new rink will be necessary, the library will have to be expanded and new employees in the operations department hired. So guess what folks everything is in proportion - new growth needs new services which means taxes will not go down.

So where does that leave us? Back to square one - property tax is not the proper municipal funding mechanism!

So what are our choices?