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Archive for the ‘Brant’ Category

A promise on the tax question

Hugo Rodrigues - January 31st, 2013

With Brantford’s 2013 tax budget finalized (pending final approval in February), I want to commit to something publicly. First, because it makes me accountable for actually completing this work some time in 2013. Second, because I think the information that will arise as a result will be extremely valuable to anyone interested in property taxes in this city.

All too often, I’ve heard Brantford’s property taxes are higher than everyone else’s. I used to hear this complaint when I covered budgets in Woodstock / Oxford County as well. Really, who *likes* paying taxes and who wouldn’t prefer paying a lot less of them?

We’ve all seen comparisons (usually produced by municipalities themselves) that try and show how taxes in city A compare to taxes in city B. Or a comparison of how their tax rates look against others. All of the ones I’ve seen always have a critical flaw. They use house values as the constant figure across the board. They tell you the taxes you’d pay on a $218,000 home in city A, or B, or C.

There’s a huge problem with that approach. As anyone who’s moved from community to community can tell you, a house in city A does not cost what it could in city B. The money it takes you to buy a certain kind of house in city A is not equal to what it requires to buy a similar house in city B.

Here’s the premise of the promise that I will undertake, hopefully with help from one or two colleagues in my field, as well as others in the municipalities we choose:

Start with a baseline home— say, a two-storey, single-detached 2,200-square-foot home with 30 to 40 feet of frontage;
Determine, with a local realtor, what that home would go for in the market;
Confirm the assessment of a home like that in that particular municipality (because the amount of your property taxes flows from this value, not the price paid for the home);
Determine tax rates (preferably 2013 ones) for that municipality / neighbourhood (some municipalities have different tax rates depending on where you live); and,
Quantify, on a standardized basis, a half-dozen programs/services and whether those are offered in each municipality.

With this comparison, people could see a few things. First, they’d see whether based on a comparable home, they’re paying a comparable amount of property taxes in any particular municipality. Second, they’d see what services they get for what they’re paying compared to other municipalities. Quite anecdotally, I suspect this comparison will show more similarities than people are usually willing to admit.

What’s this comparison missing? I’m open to suggestions. Leave ‘em below or fire ‘em at me via email.

Most of all, hold me to my promise.

Categories: Brant, Brantford, Money | 4 comments

Not anywhere near that simple

Hugo Rodrigues - December 11th, 2012

I remain intrigued by the resolution presented by Ward 4 Coun. Richard Carpenter at this week’s operation and administration committee meeting titled “Sharing of assessment revenues and expenditures.” It’s embedded below.

Carpenter is trying to separate policy and governance from money, while at the same time trying to show the city’s current push to expand its boundaries is only about the money. It verges tantalizingly close to seeing Brantford and Brant move towards some sort of upper-tier administrative body or government akin to a regional municipality.

Carpenter Assessment Resolution

The idea sounds simple enough— take all the property taxes raised by Brantford and Brant and put them into a single pot. Add the number of residents of Brant and Brantford together to determine proportionality. Then divide the money in the pot based on each council’s share of the overall population. That way, argued Carpenter, when a new business or industry sets up shop anywhere in Brantford or Brant, both municipalities share in the new property taxes paid by that development.

Carpenter read from the Ontario Municipal Act Sec. 20, which allows municipalities to enter into agreements to jointly provide services. I don’t know that’s the best section to lean on, as it’s aimed at services and Carpenter’s resolution is more about taxation and spending. But anyway.

In a nutshell, here are some of the impediments the two councils would need to overcome to really make this idea work:

The 2005 Provincial Policy Statement, which curtails the ability for water and sewer services to cross municipal boundaries;
The fact Brantford and Brant have different mill rates— for a truly equitable pooling of revenue, would both municipalities not require the same mill rates by property tax class?, and
Would this not increase pressure for equitable service to be provided across both municipalities? Why would ratepayers in the city support paying for county services and vice-versa? (I know, if it’s a truly proportional split this would be a wash).

I also come back to the question of that upper-level administrative or political body akin to regional government. You already have social services, the long-term care facility and land ambulance jointly paid for and administered by both councils. When you add overall taxation and apportioning of expenses to the mix, what’s the real difference between that and regional government? You’d have a tier of something above both councils making financial decisions that would then fall to each local council to implement.

I remain intrigued.

Categories: Brant, Brantford, Dissention in the ranks, Love from the upper orders, Money | No comments

Who will break the dam on boundaries?

Hugo Rodrigues - September 17th, 2012

This post is brought to you by the agenda for the latest meeting of Brantford city council’s “bla bla bla whatever we’ve called the thing we don’t want to call annexation” ~~committee~~ task force.

I’ve linked, but it’s hardly worth it since the entire meeting was in-camera, under the auspices of security of the property of the municipality and potential/proposed/pending acquisition or disposition of property/lands.

On the former, I won’t quibble because in previous failed rounds of boundary adjustment negotiations, discussions have included real property owned by either the City of Brantford or the County of Brant such as local distribution company utilities (aka hydro companies). On the disposition/acquisition? Legally I’d lose a contestation of that clause, but in a boundary adjustment/annexation, unless the city were to purchase land beyond its borders, this is moot. Land owned by X or Y, being moved from municipality A to B, is not “acquired” property as far as I’m concerned.

The bigger irritant on this is that while Ward 4 Coun. Richard Carpenter is not on the task force, he has already asked, in committee of the whole and council, that as much of the discussion as possible be conducted in public. There are few secrets here as the city and county are dusting off discussions that ended in 2009. Councils leaked like a sieve (from what I’ve been told) at the time and since, so there are few “big” questions that aren’t reasonably in the public domain.

The owners of all land beyond the city borders is a matter of public record (you can head on down to the land registry office beside the courthouse with a credit card and for $11 a pop, it’s all yours). I would wager coffee on most if not all of that land being owned by speculators or developers, waiting for the day when the boundary moves and those lands can be serviced and developed without going against local and provincial policies. Given they’re going to squat on that land and rent it out for crops or whatever until the boundary moves, let them take the risk of selling too early or too late should their land(s) come into the realm of possibility to become part of the city.

The city is driving this process— it’s the one that says it needs to push out its borders into Brant in order to develop a greater range of so-called employment lands. Without those additional employment lands, there’s negligible increases in taxable assessment and the services the city can reasonably afford to offer will only continue to diminish. There appears to be more effort put into growing assessment in this manner than increasing the assessed values of lands within the city’s current borders, but that’s a whole other post that I’ve kind of already written.

In the spirit of open and transparent government, the city should be far more judicious in how these meetings are run. Everyone has the right to consult a lawyer in private and everyone has the right to buy and sell things without the whole world knowing what’s going on. However these boundary discussions are about much, much more than that and as much as possible, council and its committees, task forces, etc. on this topic should be as open as possible.

Categories: Brant, Brantford, Dissention in the ranks | No comments

Let’s call it what it is — annexation

Hugo Rodrigues - June 29th, 2012

There was much hubbub earlier this week as Brant and Brantford members of council met to start the latest round of negotiations aimed at moving that boundary between the city and county.

Officially, that’s the City / County Strategic Growth Negotiations Task Force.

On Monday, when city councillors met for a historical overview, it was a different A-word that caused Ward 3 Coun. Dan McCreary to look in my general direction and comment about the media not making too much of amalgamation or annexation. The words are politically loaded— annexation being evil, I guess, because it implies some kind of takeover.

“Annexation: the act or an instance of annexing, especially new territory.”
“Annex: 1. to attach, append, or add, especially to something larger or more important.
2. to incorporate (territory) into the domain of a city, country, or state: Germany annexed part of Czechoslovakia.
3. to take or appropriate, especially without permission.
4. to attach as an attribute, condition, or consequence.
— Dictionary.com

So let’s call it what it is folks. The ultimate goal here is that the city’s boundary will move, and expand into areas that are currently the County of Brant. Let’s stop dressing it up as a ‘change in governance,’ ‘strategic growth’ or other such babble.

It’s an annexation, plain and simple.

Categories: Brant, Brantford, Dissention in the ranks | No comments