The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Mayor George Fontaine is defending a proposal to more evenly distribute municipal costs as neither an assault on the poor nor a gift to the wealthy. Instead, he told a public forum last week, the concept of using a per-household fee _ not property taxes _ to fund policing and firefighting comes down to fairness. 'We've been looking at alternatives to what we're doing now to try and level the playing field on a taxation basis,' Mayor Fontaine told a dozen residents at the City Hall Council Chambers last Tuesday, Oct. 2. Council's proposal, if implemented as originally described, would remove the $1.6 million annual cost of the Flin Flon RCMP and the Flin Flon Fire Dept. from property taxes. Council would then divide that cost evenly among all taxpaying properties across the community, possibly through a yearly fee of $567 per lot. Mayor Fontaine said the intent is to raise what owners of low-end homes are charged while keeping everyone else at about the same level they're at now. See 'Largest...' Pg. 3 Continued from Pg. 1 But that does not mean low-end properties _ and potentially by extension low-income homeowners and renters _ will face steep hikes. Calculations provided by the city show that the largest increase would be felt by those with a home assessed at $40,000. They would pay an extra $338 a year. A $30,000 home would be charged an extra $158 a year, while a $60,000 home would pay another $228. Mayor Fontaine said such figures reflect the fact that many low-end homeowners are not receiving the full $750 annual homeowners' grant offered by the Manitoba government, as their properties are not worth enough. So while low-end homes would be charged more under council's proposal, the province, not the owners, would actually fund much of the difference. 'I'm quite pleased to see the province get an opportunity to give us a few dollars more through (the homeowners' grant),' said Mayor Fontaine. 'We're missing an opportunity to take it.' Added Coun. Bill Hanson: 'If you're worried about people in the lower-end homes being hit with this huge increase, that's not going to happen.' Lowering burden The proposal would have the effect of maintaining or lowering the tax burden on high-end homes. The owner of a $100,000 home would see almost no difference, paying less than $2 more per year. Someone with a $150,000 home would save $281, and the owner of a $200,000 home would pay $564 less. Such numbers have opened the door for some to criticize council's proposal as a reverse Robin Hood scheme that would benefit the well-off at the expense of those with less. Coun. Skip Martin did not use that term, but he did tell the forum he currently opposes the proposal because he does not feel he has enough information. 'Right now all I see is a shift of money from higher-assessed properties to lower-assessed properties,' he said. 'I still think the fairest way to tax is to use the mill rate, and the mill rate is 'everybody pays exactly the same based on (each) $1,000 (value segment of their property).' So if you have a home worth more, you pay more, but everybody's paying exactly the same amount, so much on $1,000.' Coun. Martin was not the only one questioning council's potential strategy. 'I was just concerned about the seniors and the welfare people,' Dennis Hydamaka, an advocate for low-income residents, told council. Hydamaka said he can envision the plan forcing more people through the doors of the Lord's Bounty Food Bank, where he is a volunteer. Mayor Fontaine said nobody wants a busier food bank 'so we're going to study the system very carefully and see if it actually is going to affect anybody to that point.' He stressed the cost of the proposal would not be 'coming off the backs of the poor, as it might sound like' at first blush. Mayor Fontaine said high-end homeowners have been facing tax hikes of $300 or $400 a year and 'nobody worries about them.' 'I guess they're all really wealthy so nobody thinks about them,' he said. 'Actually, not all of our homeowners that are at those more expensive homes are that much more wealthy than anybody else.' When council boosts the mill rate under the current system, Mayor Fontaine said 'it hits the top taxpayers considerably harder than it does those paying at the lower end.' 'As a matter of fact, a lot of them at the lower end of the tax scale never see any effect from any tax increase,' he said. Still, Mayor Fontaine said council's goal is not to cut high-end homeowners slack. 'Don't worry about it. They'll get hit again when the mill rate (goes) up,' he said. Explanation welcomed Council's explanation of how the homeowners' grant would mitigate increases on low-end households was welcomed by Cal Huntley. Huntley, a former city councillor, attended the forum with concerns about how the concept would impact seniors and low-income families. Mayor Fontaine said the sizable disparity among taxes paid by Flin Flonners is illustrated on city council. Coun. Hanson, for instance, pays $245 a year after receiving a partial share of the provincial homeowners' grant. Mayor Fontaine, meanwhile, pays well over 10 times that amount. '(Coun. Hanson) is getting a lot more service than he's paying for,' said the mayor. 'He'll tell you that himself. But there's no method there to collect (extra money from him), so we're trying to change that.' Mayor Fontaine said that last year, nearly a quarter of Flin Flon homes paid less than $300 in taxes. Last week's forum was not designed to present a firm proposal, only to glean public input on the merits of the concept. It remains to be seen whether the proposal will go to a vote and what sort of tweaks, if any, lie ahead. The Manitoba government mandates that municipalities tax homes according to their assessed value, but service fees such as the one council is proposing remain perfectly legal.
