August 22 2004

"Who is John Galt of 55 King St E?"

An interesting riddle was exposed by a small editor's comment at the end of a letter published in the Cobourg Star this week. Huge amounts of ink in the "letter to the editor" space in the Cobourg Star have been devoted to the letters written by obviously angry people, about property taxes. Each one of them, as well as assigning blame for the high leve of taxationl, suggested that some other form of taxation than the present system be instituted.

One such letter, of two that were published, was signed by a person calling himself John Galt. He suggested that the Town Council was to blame for the high taxes house owners are paying because the Town Council has been holding up the development of residential construction for frivolous reasons. John Galt also put forward the opinion that the Town's taxes could go down if all of the houses in the New Amhearst development were allowed. This development has been held up because it doesn't meet the standards and principles of the Town's Official Plan.

John Galt's letter was responded to by the unofficial assessment expert, John Mackie. He pointed out that it is a well known fact that new development doesn't lead to lower tax rates because of the increased revenue. What really happens is that taxes go up because the new residents overburden existing services, arenas and libraries and roads to name a few.

So back to the editor's comments that caught my eye. At the end of Mr. Mackie's letter was the notation that the paper had checked on the address of John Galt (55 King St E- the address of the former Chateau Hotel -now Victoria Park) and found it to be fictitious and if he wants more letters published he had better be honest the next time.

With the radar up it was time to check further.

Talking to Mr Mackie about the incident he said that it was he who had started the questioning. Not wanting to obtain confidential information from the paper, address and such about the said John Galt, he contacted the Mayor's office and suggested that as the tone of the second letter was highly critical of the Council perhaps the Mayor's office might want to know who this fellow was and discuss the issue directly. The Mayor's office contacted the paper and the paper investigated and then issued the official comment seen after Mr. Mackie's letter. Mr Mackie told me he was told the the paper had not discovered the error as the regular person - the fact checker - had been on vacation!

So what next? Who is John Galt? and do we really care? I suppose we should because the opinion of John Galt is one that a lot of uninformed people have. It goes like this - allow as much residential building as possible because new business is not coming to town and we need the tax revenue. We know business pays much more tax than homeowners so therefore if we lose business and industry it must be made up by other sectors. When faced with the argument that more homeowners means more demand on services the retort is that those costs should be covered by the "lot levy" a one time cost charged to the builders and always passed on to new home buyers. Ironically the greatest amount of bellyaching and whining about the high cost of the 'lot levy' comes from the same builders who are demanding to build!

But in conclusion if John Galt is a pseudonym and the opinion is valid then he should have the guts to put his real name forward, but then we might write him off as a crank and baldheaded whiny middle-aged man who can't get his housing development (notably the New Amhearst development) off the ground and who doesn't want to antagonise the Town when he needs the Town's approval on so many more development variances.

 

Browsing the TV channels:

Surfing away last Monday evening and on channel 10 up pops the Town Council. I had entered at the time Councillor Jackson was almost in the throes of orgasm waxing eloquently and drooling over "her idol" a Mayor of a Quebec municipality who had been enforcing a curfew of 10pm on its younger citizens. Complaining about the number of phone calls she had received lately and bewailing the conduct of youth she poured out her stories of misbehaviour at the skate board park. Too bad! - if she had put as much effort into trying to find the proper place for the park instead as she does bemoaning the results of a bad decision she would be more credible.
The skate board park is in the wrong place!!! Either live with it or move it to another less problematic location. It just goes to show that Cobourg's ideology of trying to fix problems by throwing money at it doesn't work.