Engagement, Listening and Tax Increases

I read the mayor’s response to the questions posed to him by the Editor of the OwenSoundCurrent.com regarding my research paper. First of all I have to say that I’m a little jealous. He took the time to give the Owen Sound Current Editor a comprehensive response in only four days. I’ve been waiting 7 weeks and he still hasn’t acknowledged receipt of my paper. In fact since delivering a printed copy of my report to each of the members of council I have only heard from one – the Deputy Mayor. There was a time when common courtesy would dictate, at the very least, an acknowledgement of such a report. Given the importance of the subject and cost-saving ideas I presented I was thinking that members of council would have questions about the issues I raised in my report – but nothing. It was like I dropped it into a “Black Hole” and it was crushed into a speck of dust. I guess that the mayor has changed his mind about considering all ideas as he expressed in an interview with Owen Sound Hub staff when he was first running for mayor.

“For the City to prosper, all ideas must be considered” … Ian Boddy 2014 OwenSoundHub.org

In his response the mayor correctly points out a positive takeaway from the 2023 BMA Report. That is that there has been improvement on the city’s ranking on taxes per capital among other municipalities. So what does that actually mean? Well it just means that in 2022 Owen Sound didn’t increase taxes as much as other Ontario municipalities which include many single tier municipalities which have greater responsibilities than Owen Sound as a lower tier municipality. Although it’s inappropriate to compare single-tier with lower-tier municipalities, it is indeed good news because it shows that Owen Sound is at least slowing the rate of growth of our taxes.

The reality is that although it good that taxes didn’t go up as much as others, it’s still a hit in the taxpayer’s pocketbook. The 2022 BMA report informs us that in 2021 the tax levy per capita was $1824 while the 2023 BMA report tells us that in 2022 the tax levy per capita was $1850. Now from the taxpayer’s perspective we each had to pay $26 more in 2022 than we paid in 2021 – that's Tax Growth!

I take issue with the mayor’s assertion that we need to cut important services in order to reverse the trend of annual tax increases. If he had taken the time to read my report, he would have read 14 different actions (ideas) that Council can take to reverse the trend without cutting any services. We just need do a few things differently by implementing some of the solutions I outlined in my report. Many of these can be rolled out fairly quickly. For example, creating an Ancillary Business Department, expanding Shared Services, uploading the Art Gallery to the County and reducing Economic Development spend, are relativity easy ones to get off the ground with minimal pain. By addressing just these limited solutions the 2024 tax increase could be less than zero.

I was thinking that the mayor would have a few questions about these proposed solutions in light of what he said when he was running for mayor in September 2014 and touting that he was going to be a mayor that promoted community engagement and said how he was going to:

"change how things are done and how they communicate with the larger community”. Ian Boddy September 2014 OwenSoundHub.org

This year Council is likely to ignore the facts and approve a 2024 budget with an increase of 3.4%. Georgian Bluffs is considering a 4.82% tax increase for 2024. Based on the impact this has to it’s taxpayers, this is equivalent to a 2.1% tax increase to Owen Sound taxes.

As illustrated by the graph below, if Owen Sound Council approves a 3.4% tax increase and Georgian Bluffs approves a 4.82% increase, it will take 67 years to achieve tax parity with Georgian Bluffs. To correct our current high tax situation Council needs to impose a tax reduction of 2% in 2024. If they do and keep this reduction in the following years we will achieve tax parity with Georgian Bluffs in only 12 years.