world19News #121 |
| email us to : - subscribe to our newsletter or to send us your |
world19News This e-mail is going to people on the mailing list for world19. If you don't want to receive further notices, please reply to this e-mail with "remove" in the subject. Let us know if you prefer to receive this in "plain text" format. Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested. In this issue: 1. SWANSEA TOWN HALL - Job Opportunity
2. NOTES -- On Bloor: tougher times? We noticed that the Humber theatre, its site still on the market, is now being marketed by its third different realtor in less than a year.... Roots For Kids, who grabbed the prime Windermere/Bloor corner a few years ago by promising to outbid all other competitors couldn't renew its lease and is now closed. -- Police forum: Chief Fantino brings his Town Hall meetings to this neighbourhood: Wed. Feb. 19, 7pm, at Bishop Morroco Secondary School 1515 Bloor St. W.
3. CITY TAXES: John Barber We'd be interested to hear others' thoughts "Where's the fight against unfair taxes?" By JOHN
BARBER It's easy to understand why local suburbanites have gone so quiet on the subject of property taxes, after spending the better part of a generation complaining about them and lobbying for reductions. They got what they wanted: up-to-date current value assessment right across residential Toronto from the fruited plains of Etobicoke to the purple skies of Scarborough. And more: Not only did CVA drive suburban taxes down relative to taxes in the older neighbourhoods of the city, redressing a longstanding grievance, it has unexpectedly continued to do so ever since then, thus creating a suburban bonanza unforeseen in the tax wars of a decade ago. The reason is that central-city assessments are increasing at a faster pace than suburban assessments -- as determined by the relentless CVA machine. That's great for speculators in downtown real estate, but it makes life tough for people actually trying to live south of Eglinton Avenue, who are being asked to shoulder an ever-growing share of the local tax burden regardless of their incomes or ability to pay. So suburban quietude is understandable: Regular assessment shifts mean that many suburban ratepayers can sustain annual 5-per-cent tax increases, as determined by city budget makers, without paying any more actual taxes at the end of the day. What I can't understand is the complacency of central-city residents, who not only pay every nickel of annual budget-based tax hikes, but also pay equal assessment-based increases every year. Are they so rich they don't care they're being scammed? One reason for the complacency is that the scammers have managed to disguise the extent of their extraction by gradually phasing in assessment-related tax hikes. But they hate doing that -- it's administratively messy, and slows the flow of boodle to the 'burbs -- so this year they are determined to stick the fork in all the way. Thus downtown politicians now demanding another phase-in will lose the battle. But even then they're selling their constituents short. That's because phase-ins change nothing in the long run; they simply reduce the pain of unfair taxes temporarily. What Toronto's several hundred thousand shafted residential taxpayers need is exactly what the city's coddled commercial taxpayers already enjoy: hard caps that keep their annual reassessments within 5 per cent of their existing assessments. The fact is that commercial taxpayers have never faced CVA: Because of anticipated shifts exactly like those that are currently rocking the residential boat, the province capped commercial assessments in 1997. The caps were supposed to be temporary, but they were extended indefinitely three years later. A current government policy paper, authored by MPP Marcel Beaubien, has once again recommended that the caps on commercial property assessments in Ontario be lifted. But until such a thing happens -- and I'd bet my bottom dollar that it never does, given that Ernie Eves is the politically pragmatic father of assessment capping -- caps are government policy. So why aren't we protected from unreasonable assessment hikes, just as the dry cleaners and grocers we patronize are protected? They raised a fuss more than five years ago and Ernie collapsed like a fainting goat. Central-city residents should begin their campaign for tax fairness by demanding that all mayoral candidates take a firm position on residential caps: yes or no. They should apply equal pressure on provincial politicians, who are the ones who actually make the policy -- especially the Liberals, who could actually form a new government long before Toronto selects another ineffectual new mayor. Citizens throughout the developed world have done just that in the face of CVA-style assessment madness; from California to Florida to Britain, citizen protest has helped to fashion stable, politically tolerable property-tax regimes. It's time that we the suckers, the ratepayers of central Toronto, woke up and followed their lead.
For world19, world19: |