Monthly Archives: September 2009

Doer government makes shock absorbers of us all

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I got my car back recently. Not that it was stolen or anything. I dropped it off at the car dealership and in no time at all, it was ready for pickup.

When I say I got my car back, I mean that for $800 it was restored to the car I purchased three years ago but which, starting this spring, drove like a beater. The driver’s-side window rattled and every pothole and pavement break sent a jolt through the frame and caused a hard bang instead of a dull thud.

It turned out the window rattled because the screws holding it in place had shaken themselves loose. One, in fact, had turned itself right out and had fallen to the bottom of the door. That was easily repaired.

Less easily repaired, and far more expensive, was the replacement of three of four stabilizer links.

Stabilizer links are kind of like shock absorbers for the two stabilizer bars, which are rods that help keep the suspension and body rigid. The links are made of metal and hard, shock-absorbing rubber, which eventually are pounded out of shape by potholes and such, lose their shock-absorbing qualities and your car starts to drive like a beater.

I asked the Toyota customer service guy why these had worn out so seemingly quickly.

Well, he responded, when the car was designed, a whole bunch of calculations were made about how it would ride.

My car is a “touring” model. It is designed to give a smooth, quiet ride — not the marshmallow softness that North American cars once were infamous for — while also delivering a confidence-inducing stiff feel on turns.

But to achieve both the soft and hard qualities, assumptions are made about the quality of the roads on which the car will drive. These did not include the streets of Winnipeg, or Kabul for that matter, both of which I’ve driven.

He said the rate of stabilizer-link failures — and suspension-part failures generally — has been so high in Winnipeg that Toyota sent technical people here to investigate. Their conclusion? Winnipeg streets are the worst of any major city in Canada, he said.

But you already know that, or at least suspect it. The question is why?

Well, obviously because not enough money is being spent to fix them.

And it won’t be spent until one side blinks in the Mexican standoff between city hall and the legislature.

On the city’s side, council has properly frozen destructive property taxes and has been demanding since Glen Murray’s days a share of the growth taxes the province sucks out of Winnipeggers. On the province’s side, the Doer (for now) government refuses to share growth taxes but instead directs its growing haul to its political priorities.

It cherry-picks these to electoral advantage. Separate funding for more police dedicated to NDP priorities, for example. Recreation facilities in NDP ridings, provincial parks for distressed NDP urban voters.

The latest intrusion will be a $40- million price increase to build a new Disraeli bridge to soothe voters in the northeast quadrant who have been persuaded by NDP politicians that they should not be inconvenienced by future construction as all other Winnipeggers have been in the past.

So $40 million for convenience in one part of town and electoral consideration down the road, but nada for potholes today everywhere else.

Or how about the wastewater treatment plant that will add $700 million of costs to Winnipeg to remove nitrogen from sewage despite the protests of 63 scientists who say it’s a waste of money. The government disputes the number, but does not say what an accurate number is. One suspects the reason is that it’s as politically damaging to say $500 million down the toilet as it is to say $700 million flushed away.

And as the streets crumble, the province is extending freeways south to its super-subdivision. Another goes west to support CentrePort with the expansion of Inkster Boulevard.

The Inkster extension is telling. It will be a new, four-lane divided freeway up to the city, after which it will continue to be a goat path across the north end.

So why won’t the province quit twisting municipal priorities and share growth taxes? Because there is no political profit in it.

If the province shares a growth tax like the sales tax, then the city would get the credit for appropriately setting and addressing municipal priorities, and the Doer (for now) government would have less money to manipulate them to its political advantage.

In the meantime, the streets get worse and pressure mounts for property tax increases to address the problem. Should the city blink, should it lift the property-tax freeze, then it takes the hit and the province is free to fritter away money in the profligate style that we first witnessed when Premier Gary Doer catered to environmentalists at a waste of $450 million by forcing Manitoba Hydro to build a transmission line down the west side of the province.

It might be that the politically misdirected wastefulness is on such a grand scale that people simply can’t relate to all those hundreds of millions.

We can only hope that when they have to waste $800 on stabilizer links that they know whom to blame.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/doer-government-makes-shock-absorbers-of-us-all-62082462.html

Property Tax Assessments to be Mailed Soon

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Don’t ‘offload’ Decficit Deficits Cities Muncipalities State

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Federation of Municipalities asks all party leaders to adopt plan that protects property taxpayers

OTTAWA–Canada’s towns and cities are seeking assurances that Ottawa won’t eliminate its $55.9 billion deficit on the backs of local homeowners.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has written to the four federal party leaders asking each of them to commit to a deficit strategy that protects property taxpayers and spares them big tax hikes.

“All parties in Parliament must commit to ruling out direct and indirect offloading as a deficit-fighting measure,” wrote Basil Stewart, president of the association and the mayor of Summerside, P.E.I.

That commitment should include preserving programs that fund municipal infrastructure and services and preventing the transfer of tax burdens from one level of government to another.

With the effects of the recession appearing to soften, attention is turning to how the government will stem the tide of red ink and restore coffers to surplus.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has pledged that his deficit plan won’t mean cutting transfer payments.

But he’s also warned that curbing federal spending will mean “tough choices.”

That’s why the municipalities are taking the pre-emptive step.

Still fresh in the memories of many local politicians is the deficit fight of the 1990s, when Ottawa’s cost-cutting efforts sparked a domino effect of “downloading” that left towns and cities saddled with new responsibilities and no new revenue stream to pay for them.

“In the end many had no choice to but raise property taxes,” Stewart wrote in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Star.

It was during that time that infrastructure projects were delayed due to a lack of cash, and municipalities struggled with costly new obligations such as social housing and immigrant settlement.

“Within a few years, federal and provincial/territorial governments had eliminated their budget deficits and were posting record-setting budget surpluses, but property taxpayers were left paying for a growing list of municipal responsibilities,” Stewart wrote.

That’s exactly what municipalities want to avoid this time, he said.

“Offloading is a property tax hike in disguise,” Stewart said in his letter, which was sent to the party leaders yesterday.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/701463

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Property tax error shocks congregation

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Churches renting facilities not exempt from paying

WINNIPEG, MB—A Winnipeg pastor hopes to challenge a city bylaw that requires his church to pay property taxes because it doesn’t own the building where the congregation meets.

New Beginnings Church rents space in a strip mall in south Winnipeg, and pastor Ivor Grant was shocked to find out this spring that the non-denominational church owed $23,000 in property taxes dating back to 2000, when the church opened.

He had no idea that in Winnipeg, if a church rents facilities, it is not exempt from property taxes as are most churches.

The error was discovered when a day care, also located in the strip mall, closed, and with it disappeared the property tax exemption the strip mall’s management company had attributed to the church. The management company pays the property tax outright, charging tenants based on their square footage, and had not charged the church for the tax until they discovered the error.

Church leadership sought legal advice and even invited a city tax assessor to visit the church to sort the problem out because they were convinced churches do not pay property tax. An e-mail from the City of Winnipeg confirmed they could not grant a property tax exemption, citing Section 22-1 of the Municipal Assessment Act.

“We’re doing the same thing as a church that owns its property. Why are we being treated differently?” Grant asks. “Simply because we have chosen or cannot afford to own the building, we have to pay.”

The former owners of the strip mall—which sold this summer—stepped up and forgave the church part of the sum, leaving Grant with $16,000 to pay off on the 2,250-square-foot space. Grant makes his final back payment in November, but is left with a monthly property tax bill that is stretching the small church.

“Our expenses have just ballooned by about $4,500 a year—plus this payment,” he says.

While Grant admits he could look at relocating and renting from another church to avoid paying property taxes, he says the current space fulfills their needs and mission.

“We’re actually a church for people who don’t like to go to church in a traditional setting. It’s set up like a coffee house,” he says. “To move out or rent from a church would hamper what we want to do.”

While the Canadian Council of Christian Charities (CCCC) deals mainly with federal level issues, John Pellowe, CCCC executive director, says property taxes are a growing concern in Canadian cities.

“We’ve been hearing from members there are more and more hoops they need to jump through,” he says, adding that multiple interpretations of the law complicate matters.

As for Grant, he is determined to fight to change the legislation. He plans to find out how many other churches are in the same predicament and then put together a petition.

This would not be the first legal battle between the City of Winnipeg and a church over property taxes. In January 2004, Winnipeg Centre Vineyard won a property tax dispute with the City of Winnipeg assessment department that would have seen them pay about $5,000 a year in property taxes for two unoccupied floors being used for storage in their large downtown building.

http://www.christianweek.org/stories.php?id=425

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Poor fields of dreams are everyone’s fault

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IT is the golden age of youth soccer.

Nearly 10,000 kids play the beautiful game in this city. Every spring and fall, every patch of sod with goal posts is teeming with gaggles of youngsters in brightly coloured uniforms.

How could it be then that Winnipeg’s soccer pitches are so horrible?

Instead of neatly manicured fields of dreams, too many of Winnipeg’s pitches are full of sink­holes, pockmarked by bald spots and overgrown with dandelions. The Winnipeg Youth Soccer Association admits this city’s soccer pitches are an embarrassment.

It seems so ironic that at a time when soccer has become so popular, the fields would be so lacking. Even more ironic, we have a mayor who was elected on a campaign to improve recreation facili­ties and who, through his day job (or is that his night job?) knows a thing or two about keeping a nice lawn.

If he can’t maintain a de­cent patch of sod, who can?

Lamentably, woeful soccer pitches are just the latest example of how this city has been boxed into a ruddy, weed-infested corner when it comes to maintaining public amenities.

Like potholed-filled roadways and crumbling bridges, decrepit recreational facilities are a re­sult of the property tax freeze that has gripped this city for some years. In the absence of a steadily increasing source of revenue, the city has no choice but to cheap out on infrastructure, including soccer pitches, hockey rinks and pools. The city has made some investments in recreation. We’ve seen high-profile announce­ments for new indoor soccer facilities, new community recreation centres, and upgrades to playgrounds or wading pools. But those invest­ments are, for the most part, window dressing.

They make for great news releases and photo opportunities, but they merely distract us from the fact our inventory of recreation facilities is falling deeper and deeper into disrepair.

Perhaps the most alarming thing is how much people pay for things like soccer pitches, and how little anyone is doing to remedy the situation.

Most soccer families pay property taxes, which should support city-owned facilities, and education taxes, which should help with school­based pitches. In addition, parents pay hundreds of dollars per child to register for soccer. A small portion of that money, $10 a head, is paid to the city for aeration, fertilization, grass cut­ting and lining.

With all that money, surely someone has a plan to improve soccer pitches. Alas, it does not seem to be the case.

Most of us have no idea how much it costs to maintain a pristine soccer pitch, but it’s safe to say the $100,000 in levies soccer families pay the city each year isn’t enough. Property taxes are frozen, and that means recreation facili­ties are left to battle other city priorities for an anemic revenue base. And of all that money paid to register kids for soccer, one is left to wonder why more of it isn’t spent improving the condi­tion of pitches.

Nothing explains the lack of resources, and lack of planning, than the issue of grass cutting.

It’s pretty difficult to play soccer on a field with overgrown grass. You cannot put lines on a soc­cer pitch if the grass is too long. Suffice to say, cutting the grass, and keeping it short, is job one for any recreational soccer program.

However, youth soccer for some unknown reason turned to the city for grass cutting of all stand-alone pitches and those at schools. Turn­ing to a government that doesn’t have the money to take care of its own grass to cut yours is a curious bit of strategy.

The futility of the situation is graphically sym­bolized by the city’s 10-day grass-cutting cycle.

If it’s raining on the day a soccer pitch is to be mowed, the city crews come back 10 days later.

If it’s still raining, they come back in another 10 days. It’s a perfect approach to maintaining boulevards but not appropriate for soccer fields.

This feeble effort is exacerbated by soccer groups. Many groups, for example, pay crews to line the fields, but because they cannot antici­pate exactly when the city cuts the grass, they are often unable to do their job. Sometimes the grass is simply too long to line. Or, they find out that after lining a shaggy field, the city did come and mow it, erasing the white lines.

It would be easy to dump on the city for the failure to maintain soccer pitches. However, this is a failure that everyone should wear: from homeowners that naively celebrate property tax freezes, to the youth soccer groups that collect all registration money and then stand around like innocent bystanders, and the city itself for treating valuable recreational assets like high­way medians.

Everyone, it appears, deserves a red card.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/Poor-fields-of-dreams-are-everyones-fault–59725457.html

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2010 Property Tax Reassessment Notice: WHY? WHEN? HOW?

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WHY?

Under provincial legislation, all properties across Manitoba are being reassessed regularly to make sure that taxes are fairly shared according to the assessed value of owned or leased properties. This is also done to ensure that the assessed values keep pace with real estate market conditions and help property owners understand and evaluate their own assessments.

WHEN?

The new assessment becomes effective in 2010, and will be used on your 2010 property tax statement. Assessment notices are being mailed in advance of the 2010 tax year. This action will benefit you as a property owner, as you will have more time to review your assessment and discuss it with an assessor. It is advantageous for the municipality too, as there will be more time to finalize assessments before the final roll is needed for tax purposes in 2010.

HOW?

Conveniently, you can get your assessment information online by visiting www.gov.mb.ca/assessment. Here, you’ll be informed about the assessment of all properties in Manitoba except in Winnipeg (Winnipeg assessments are available at www.winnipegassessment.com). You will also find answers to frequently asked questions.

Another way is to personally visit an assessor in a community near you. Assessors will hold Open Houses in many communities, offering you a convenient opportunity to discuss your assessment.

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2010 Property Tax Update

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The following are types of assessment notices, you may anticipate receiving one or two of the under mentioned:

•A real property notice for buildings and land
•A personal property notice for certain equipment or machinery
•A business notice, if you operate a commercial enterprise and your municipality imposes a business tax or fee

This updated assessment may affect your 2010 property taxes. I may suggest you to take a few minutes to scan and review this to supply you with recent information regarding land tax matters.

The Manitoba Government is reducing property taxes across the province. This is done by increasing the Education Property Tax Credit since 1999, to $650 in 2009, eliminating the Education Support Levy on residential property, saving residential taxpayers $100 million annually, and increasing the Farmland School Tax Rebate to 75% in 2009 from 33.3% in 2004.

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Understanding property tax numbers not that difficult

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Are property tax talks making your head spin? The numbers and the percentages – it can all be a bit overwhelming.
If you’re one of the few who understands it all, share the wealth. If you don’t quite grasp the concept, read on.

Grande Prairie city council passed the 2009 property tax, raising municipal taxes by 10.5% and bringing the overall rate to 9.4%. Confused?

Well here it goes.

Total property taxes are made up of the education tax (20%), which is set by the province, and the municipal tax (80%) set by the city. Both rates went up this year: Taxes for the educational system went up 6.3% and there was a 10.5% increase for the city. When combining the two rates, the overall increase in property tax this year works out to 9.4%.

The hike will see the average homeowner pay an additional $290 in property tax in 2009. A home assessed at $300,000 in 2008 paid $2,604. The same house’s assessed value decreased to $273,000 this year, but with the tax increase, that homeowner will pay $2,894 in taxes.

The city will collect a total of about $90 million in property taxes in 2009, of which $71.5 actually stays in the bank, while $19 million goes to the province for education taxes.

And now for the important part – where is your money going?

Some $11.5 million goes to capital projects, but does not completely cover the total capital expenses for the year. Costs are also paid with grants and the Municipal Sustainable Initiative – a 10-year provincial funding program that began in 2007, meant to provide municipalities with funds on an annual basis.

Projects for 2009 include the Aquatics Multiplex, $3 million for Aquatera’s community energy system and a third fire hall worth nearly $4.7 million.

Taxpayers contribute with $60 million of the total $98 million needed for the operating budget. The rest of the cost is covered through user fees, franchise fees, investments, unconditional grants and other sources of revenue.

For every dollar you pay in taxes, 30 cents goes to protective services, 26 cents to community services, 22 cents to public works, 19 cents to the school boards, two cents for government services and one cent for other demands.

http://www.dailyheraldtribune.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1556306

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Transfer tax slammed

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Realtors call for exemptions, reductions

Winnipeg’s realtors have asked the province to consider exemptions and reductions to the land transfer tax, which the agents say is an impediment to some would-be homebuyers.

The provincial government keeps a registry of land titles and requires people to pay to transfer the title when they buy a property. That tax can run into the thousands of dollars. The Winnipeg Realtors Association says that can cause some prospective homebuyers to delay an entry into the housing market as they save up enough for the land transfer tax, which is paid up front as part of the closing costs of a sale.

“We feel it’s a very regressive, negative tax,” said Don Cook, chair of civic and legislative affairs for the Winnipeg Realtors Association. “The government’s really getting a good take on it right now.”

A spokeswoman for provincial Finance Minister Greg Selinger said the government has projected it will bring in $43.6 million from the tax this fiscal year, which ends March 31. The cost of administering the land transfers is about 1% of that revenue, she said, meaning about 99% of it goes into the government’s general coffers.

Suggestions

Cook said the realtors met with Selinger on Feb. 18 with a list of suggestions for changes, including an exemption for first-time buyers and affordable housing program participants. Ontario and B.C. exempt first-time home buyers, while Saskatchewan and Alberta have no land transfer tax at all, the Winnipeg Realtors Association said.

Cook said the realtors also suggested changing the rates in Manitoba.

Currently, Manitobans pay nothing on the first $30,000 of sale price, 0.5% from $30,000 to $90,000, 1% from $90,000 to $150,000, 1.5% from $150,000 to $200,000, and 2% on the portion above $200,000.

The realtors have suggested charging 0.5% up to $100,000, 1% up to $200,000, 1.5% up to $500,000 and a cap at the half-million mark. “We’re hopeful it will happen,” Cook said.

However, Selinger’s spokeswoman said the NDP government is “prioritizing initiatives that will stimulate our economy” and focusing on tax measures contained in last fall’s throne speech. The speech made no mention of land transfer tax.

She said the government has instead eased the property tax burden by eliminating the education support levy and increasing the education property tax credit over the past few years.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/winnipeg/2009/03/09/8677276-sun.html

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Dare to compare

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Is mayor’s claim of lowest taxes true?

Mayor Sam Katz claims Winnipeg has the lowest municipal property taxes in Canada.

He argued that in a Winnipeg Sun column Friday, saying that when you compare municipal property taxes and utility costs such as sewer and water rates among Canadian cities, Winnipeg has the lowest taxes in the country.

Is that true?

Well, yes and no.

Katz was quoting from the City of Edmonton’s annual property tax survey. It’s one of the more popular and credible cross-country comparisons of property taxes.

The data used by Edmonton’s planning department is sound. And they do a pretty good job of defining the statistics they use and explaining the caveats and inconsistencies that go along with them.

But the truth is, the data they use is extremely limited and doesn’t really provide a full comparison of property taxes between cities.

In some cases, they even measure costs that have nothing to do with municipal taxes and utility charges.

Which means the numbers they produce, while interesting to track from year to year, really don’t give us a true picture of how Winnipeg’s property taxes compare with other cities.

For starters, the survey only measures one type of house.

The sample home in the survey is defined as the following: “A twenty-five to thirty-year-old, single-detached, three-bedroom bungalow with a main floor area of 1,200 square feet, a double car garage and finished full basement, on a 6,000 square-foot lot located in an average neighbourhood of the city.”

That sample house was picked because it represents the most common type of house in Edmonton. But it may not be the most common type of house in Winnipeg or any other city.

If you do live in a house that’s similar to that description, the survey is useful.

But if you live in a new 1,800 sq.-ft, two-story home or a 2,000 sq.-ft bungalow with four bedrooms, it’s not terribly relevant.

The other problem with the Edmonton survey Katz refers to is that it includes some costs that have nothing to do with what the city charges us in taxes and utilities.

The category Katz uses includes utility charges. But the survey lumps in costs such as telephone and electricity rates as utilities, which are irrelevant when it comes to property taxes and municipal utility charges.

For example, Manitoba has the lowest electricity rates in the country, which artificially improves our standing in the category Katz is using.

Also, there are other ways of comparing property taxes among cities beyond using a single sample home that the survey does not capture.

One way is to measure taxes as a percentage of what a house is worth.

For example, a $200,000 house in Toronto pays $1,222 in municipal property taxes. A $200,000 house in Winnipeg pays almost double that at $2,290 in municipal taxes.

Obviously a house for $200,000 in Toronto is going to be a shack and the one in Winnipeg will be a half-decent 1,200 sq.-ft home. But as a percentage of the value of the home, taxes are much higher in Winnipeg than in many other cities.

None of this should diminish the progress Katz and previous mayors have made in bringing property taxes down in Winnipeg compared with other cities.

Most other cities have been raising taxes and by freezing ours, there’s no doubt we’ve made some headway.

But do we have the lowest municipal property taxes in Canada?

That’s debatable.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/2009/03/15/8760266.html#/news/columnists/tom_brodbeck/2009/03/15/pf-8754736.html

Property Tax Assessments to be Mailed Soon

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Province caps rent increases at 1%

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WINNIPEG – Renters will see a maximum one per cent rent hike next year, the province announced today.

That’s much lower than last year’s cap, which was 2.5 per cent.

The rent control guideline takes into account cost increases including utilities, property taxes and other expenses in running an apartment complex.

The cap applies to most residential rental property including apartments, single rooms, houses and duplexes.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Province-sets-rent-control-cap-at-1-57362362.html

Property Tax Assessments to be Mailed Soon

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