To
sbeckel@greaternapanaee.com
Sep 16 at 7:57 PM
Susan, I
understand that council is to discuss the Services Delivery Review at it's September 23 meeting and you are preparing reports for
council. I did a bit of research on this and I thought the following
information might help you. I was interested in the historical basis for the
current regime and I was particularly interested in what services are special
rated in other municipalities.
What I found
surprised me.
Basis for
Current Tax Policy:
As you know,
s. 326 of the Municipal Act, 2001 is the authority for a special levy
for a service which benefits different areas differently but it only applies
after council has identified the service and used some kind of process to
determine which of the municipality's costs are related to that special
service. Napanee has, as far as I can determine,
never done this and, if I'm right, this brings into question the legitimacy of
the current regime. I understand that the current service delivery review is
designed to bring the tax policy into compliance with s. 326 of the Act for
2015 and I agree it is essential that this be done.
The CAO made
reference to the 1997 restructuring order which did permit area rating but only
in the old Town of
I gather that
the CAO sought legal advice but the opinion obtained was not shared with
council.
There may be
something I'm missing. The archives on the website contain the minutes but not
the by-laws. However, I do notice that on April 28, 2011, there was a
resolution changing the surcharge to 32% from 34%. The 2011 taxing by-law is
not on the website and I would be interested in knowing whether it designates
which special service the 32% levy is for and what the cost of that special
service was determined to be.
In view of
the election campaign underway and the importance that this issue has to the
electorate, I think that council and the public need to know whether there
is uncertainty about the legitimacy of the current area rating scheme.
And, I think council itself should receive (in closed session, of course)
a copy of all legal opinions on the matter provided to date including the one
referred to in the CAO's August 8 memo. Failure to do
so attracts public suspicion and mistrust and heaven's knows we have enough of
that in Napanee already.
Identifying
the Services to be Reviewed:
I understand
that part of your task is to identify which services are not equally available
in
all areas so
that the consultant can be asked to make an estimate of the amount of the
disparity, the cost and area affected by each and the extent to which it is
already recognized by the assessment process. This is a daunting task and, I
would expect, will involve a lot of estimates and judgment calls. Thus, I think
it needs to be done carefully and openly and I know several councillors and
candidates have expressed the same view.
The CAO's August 8 memo says that the municipal lawyers were of
little assistance in identifying which services to include in the special
services review. This is not surprising since this is more of an accounting
than a legal issue. Since an area benefited must be identified for each special
service, it seems to me that the services should be ones where the area
benefited can be easily identified. It is easy to determine where sidewalks,
street lighting and water/sewer end. But most others, including fire &
police services, do not end or change abruptly at any particular line on a map.
It seems to me that some guidance could be obtained from looking at what
other municipalities have done in terms of both services identified and amount
of surcharge.
I'm not sure
if someone there has done this, but here's what I found. I did a Google search
using "Municipal Act, 2001" 326 area special 2014 as a
search string.
Quite a number
of municipalities have special service by-laws for services to be
done. These resemble the old local improvement charge by-laws. I could
only find five municipalities which had by-laws imposing special service
charges for existing services. You may have other resources available to
you to determine what others have done and if so you may be able to find other
examples.
Each of the
five I found has a by-law designed strictly in accordance with s. 326 of the
Municipal Act. These by-laws cover such specified services as sidewalks, street
lighting and transit where the area benefitted is easy to determine. Two of
them (Hamilton & Kawartha Lakes) imposed surcharges for police and fire
protection but I am not certain of the local circumstances there. (For example,
some areas may have their own police force.) It is significant that none has a
total surcharge anywhere close to 32% (the largest seemed to be 10%) and none
has a scheme like ours where the amount of the benefit hasn't been quantified
and the surcharge isn't designated for any particular service.
Loyalist Twp:
A good
example is
Transit
Sidewalk snow
Fire
Recreation
Sidewalk levy
Streetlighting
http://www.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/8A385718-77BD-4FBB-81CE-0559E8853DBF/0/033_2014_103_By_Law_To_Set_and_Levy_the_Rates_of_Taxation_For_The_Year_2014.pdf
Hospital
Fire
Police
Transit
Parks
Streetlights
BIA
https://www.city.kawarthalakes.on.ca/city-hall/by-laws-and-policies/finance/2011093_A_Bylaw_to_Establish_2011_Tax_Rates.pdf
Port Hope:
Bulky
Waste/Christmas Tree pickup
Parking
Sidewalk
Maintenance
Streetlights
Transit
Police
https://ca-mg5.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?retry_ssl=1#2320253570
Sewage &
Drainage
Street
Lighting
Transit
http://ctbpub.thunderbay.ca/ctbapps/ctbbylaws.nsf/a033c629212ffe9c85256e580054fa28/c2071be289845ea885257154004f6cba?OpenDocument
To me the
list attached to the CAO's August 8 memo needs to reviewed in light of what other municipalities do. Ten of
the items on the list are for roads. No other municipality that I could find
area-rates roads. And how "livestock kills" made it
to the list is puzzling.
Public Input:
This is a
highly contentious issue which pits various factions in the community against
each other. The danger is that without an open and public process there could
easily be allegations that the process has been skewered, the data given to the
consultant is suspect and the whole process lacks legitimacy. Indeed this is
already being suggested.
Public input is
needed from the outset to give the process legitimacy, not only in determining
which services are to be reviewed but also the boundaries of the areas
benefited by each service, the quantifying of such benefit and, as staff have
suggested, the extent to which this is already compensated by the assessment
process. And the public needs access to the data provided to the consultant so
it can make it's own judgment and the process is seen
as fair and open.
I'm not
running for office. But I have lived here for 42 years and it's painful to see
this issue pitting different regions of the municipality against each other. In
my view it has reduced the quality of our governance of our Town and I believe
that if it is allowed to fester, it risks tearing our municipality apart. I
personally spent a lot of time in the 1990s working on amalgamation. I am sorry
that 17 year later, the regions are still feuding and it is painful to watch
what is now happening.
We need to do
this and do it right and in an open and public fashion.
Hubert Hogle
245 John Napanee ON
613-532-3672