Ontario’s Review of Municipal Funding
Today the press was awash with news that the Ontario government will be reviewing how municipal services are financed and delivered. The review is slated to take 18 months, will probably deal with municipal delivery of health, housing, and social services. The long timeline means that it will end after the upcoming municipal and provincial elections.
The review is a good idea. The timing of the upcoming provincial election means that even a shorter review wouldn’t have a chance to be implemented anyway, so there isn’t much of a difference. The Tory budget cuts of the 1990s downloaded many responsibilities onto municipalities, since then, there does not seem to have been a great deal of research (by the government) on ways to improve the situation.
My only disappointment is that the review will not cover taxation issues. Currently, in Ottawa, the city pays for about 30% of the services in question. Since the city pays for it, and the city is financed by property taxes, that’s the same as saying that 30% of the cost of provincial services comes out of property taxes. According to the provincial Conservatives, no other province uses property taxes to fund services that should be delivered by the province (and whose fault is that, Mr. Tory?).
Sadly, the Green Party of Ontario hasn’t gotten a press release out on the subject. I don’t know what it will say, but I hope it would be something on the lines of:
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Property taxes are a bad way to finance any kind of service. They should be replaced with income tax, and (possibly) a special tax on the sale of property.
Municipalities should be able to levy their own taxes, either on income or sales.
For services that incur a cost for every municipal resident, such as water treatment, and sewage treatment, users should pay based on use. For service costs that are based on the location of a residence (such as road maintenance, water delivery, or sewar maintenance), residences should be charged based on the amount of infrastructure necessary to get their cars/water/crap from point A to point B.
To help pay for the cost of public transit, residents of houses that are poorly served by public transit should have to pay more for road maintenance.
In my mind, the taxes/fees that people pay should be based on their use, and based on the needs of others. If we directly tie the use of some finite resource to the cost of using it, people are more likely to be careful about its use. There are many services (such as social housing and community health) that are fundamentally helpful to society – as such, they should be paid for out of income taxes, and other mechanisms that are based on someone’s ability to pay.
The sitting opposition parties did their usual dance of rage. The Conservative critic (local MPP Lisa MacLeod) complained that the duration of the study was too long, and that examining the problem is a stand-in for raising the transfer payments to municipalities. The NDP critic complained that considering possible solutions is evidence that the current government doesn’t have a solution of its own. Great job. Way to offer alternative an vision.
To help pay for the cost of public transit, residents of houses that are poorly served by public transit should have to pay more for road maintenance.
That hardly seems fair. Saying that everyone with no public trasit should pay more let the people off that do have public transit and don’t use it. There is tons of busses running from Kanata to Downtown every morning, and yet there are still tons of cars making the very same trip. They have a park and ride option that could be used by more people I’m sure.
Myself, if I wanted to catch a bus downtown. The closest route goes nowhere near my house twice a day. And that’s ignoring the fact that my morning drive is 5 minutes long.
Don’t tax me because you can provide service here. Subsides the transit. Make it so cheap and efficient that everyone who can use it will. Then the only people who be using the roads will be the people who have to. And they will probably only drive as far as the nearest bus.
residences should be charged based on the amount of infrastructure necessary to get their cars/water/crap from point A to point B.
The cost of infrastructure is covered in the initial cost of the house. When a developer develops a subdivision they are responsible for roads, water and storm water management. The only cost to the city is maintinance. To bill people based on location will create real estate booms around supply areas. Which will push people with lower incomes out of these areas into places where services will cost more. Either that or it will go the otherway and the areas around supplys will become gettos for poor people for cheaper living. I’m pretty sure that a better comunity model is a mixture of different incomes and housing costs spread evenly around the city.
Your ideas seems to be trying to push people into urban centres. The fact of the matter is that people don’t want to live in urban centres. They also can’t afford it. A family of 4 could buy a single family home in Stittsville for $255,000 or they could get a smaller one in centre town for $330000. The cost of borrowing an extra $75k is $465 per month.
Where would do you think most people will choose to raise there kids?