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.
Dear Editor, I would like to respond to the letter written by "A Taxpayer in Flin Flon" in order to clear up some misunderstandings. First, the members of our community's churches do in fact pay as much tax as everyone else. We pay for upgrades and improvements in our property taxes, this includes ministers. Second, the reason why communities do not tax church buildings is in recognition of the benefit the church is to the well-being of its people. Local churches provide programs and services to every age group, from children's programs to senior citizens. These services are of great value to the community. A recent American study has shown the amount of volunteer hours local churches pour into their communities saves the government billions of dollars a year in social services spending. This is true locally as well, where our churches are involved in hospital and senior visitation, caring for shut-ins, hospice work, divorce care, youth work, domestic interventions, caring for those in crisis and on and on the list goes. Most importantly, churches provide for the spiritual well-being of the community. Baptisms, weddings, funerals, weekly services, Bible studies, and countless other spiritual "services" are carried out almost exclusively by the churches. In addition to all these factors, regular churchgoers make good citizens. Statistics show that regular church attenders volunteer more often, give more, and are, as a rule, more law abiding than sporadic or non-church attenders. So, realizing all these benefits churches offer is the reason why many communities, including our own, give churches a tax break. But this is not why the Ministerial made a presentation to the City Council. The specific issue that was discussed was that for churches without housing, the local improvement levy went up about 288 per cent. This is an increase of thousands of dollars for some of our churches. It is not unreasonable to ask questions when your City bill goes up by a thousand-plus dollars in one year! The Ministerial wondered if there was any way that could be changed or made more fair. We were made aware that it could not at this time because: (a) It is the Province that sets the levy rates and (b) The budgeting factors for the levy had been made this past spring. Explanations that we accepted. As far as the comment goes regarding churches "trusting God," let me assure A Tax Payer in Flin Flon that our local churches are in fact seeking to do so and it is our prayer that he/she will as well. If anyone has further questions please feel free to contact me at our church office at 687-8498. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Rev. Doug Smith Flin Flon Alliance Church
