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.
'City council is dividing the community,' or some variant of that comment, is something that I have heard quite a few times over the past year. For the record, I don't believe for a moment that council is trying to be divisive. It's just that some of their ideas, as bold, controversial and new as they are, yield the inevitable result of splitting people into different camps of opinion. Is that bad? No more so than the 70 billion other ways that people's opinions are split. Enter a crowded room and say the words 'euthanasia,' 'drug legalization,' or even 'David Letterman is a comedic genius' and be prepared to be inundated with conflicting convictions. We may all breathe the same air, but that incoming oxygen powers unique brains that devise wildly varying beliefs on what is right, what is wrong and what is somewhere in between. That said, it's fair to say that Flin Flonners are unaccustomed to a city council _ not always unanimously, by the way _ stirring the proverbial pot with this much vigour. Case in point is council's proposal to level out, to a greater degree, Flin Flon's property tax burden. Council (well, most of it) sees great injustice in the fact that lower-end homes, of which there are many, pay but a few hundred dollars in taxes each year while upper-end homes face bills in the thousands. So, mindful that the Manitoba government forbids a minimum property tax, council devised a plan to raise taxes on low-end homes and lower them (for now) on the high end. I was skeptical of the plan at first. It sounded too much like reverse Robin Hood, and I worried about the impact on low-income residents and pension-reliant seniors, two growing demographics in our community. Now I would say that I am 50/50 on the idea. I can see good reasons to do it and good reasons not to do it. I guess as a journalist, that's where you want to be. Complexities The biggest reason that I am no longer 0/100 (which is to say completely opposed) to the taxation plan is Mayor George Fontaine's efforts to detail its many intricate complexities. Meanwhile, Mayor Fontaine also believes that non-Flin Flonners who utilize Flin Flon-funded amenities and facilities should financially support the municipality. He has started with cottagers but has said he feels just as strongly about the need for other regional residents to contribute dollars. Most controversially, Mayor Fontaine has stated that the city will attempt to annex cottage country unless a reasonable funding deal can eventually be reached. Again, I'm stuck in the middle of this debate. On the one hand, I listen to politicians who unilaterally declare cottagers as 'Flin Flonners' _ knowing full well that many of them disagree with this label _ and wonder if it's not a huge overstepping of authority. On the other, I can't entirely dismiss city council's argument that this region is essentially one community. Indeed many cottagers do think of themselves as Flin Flonners. So, no, I don't see council's actions as deliberately divisive. They're just actions our councillors believe in. If the public is not on board,our elected officials will certainly find out come election time. What about cottagers who oppose the idea of annexation and don't have a vote in Flin Flon elections? They are free to lobby the provincial government, which has the final say over any annexation attempt. Euthanasia. Drug legalization. Property tax policy. Cottage annexation. Issues big and small have and will continue to divide our opinions, but they don't have to divide us as people. Local Angle runs Fridays.
