Property Taxes
The Cam Guthrie cabal that includes Craig Chamberlain and Jason Thorne would have you believe that Guelph is one of the highest-taxed municipalities in Ontario. This is completely false, but it is being repeated again and again in the hope that city residents will come to believe it. Don’t! Here is a table of Guelph’s tax rates since 2004:
| Year | Tax Rate | Estimated Tax Rate w/o RSR use | CPI % | |
| 2004 | 6.90% | 9.62% | 1.85% | |
| 2005 | 5.14% | 5.14% | 2.20% | |
| 2006 | 4.70% | 7.48% | 1.78% | |
| 2007 | 4.30% | 6.01% | 1.84% | |
| 2008 | 4.50% | 5.77% | 2.26% | |
| 2009 | 3.74% | 4.60% | 0.35% | |
| 2010 | 3.66% | 3.66% | 2.46% | |
| 2011 | 1.78% | 2.22% | 3.09% | |
| 2012 | 3.52% | 3.52% | 1.42% | |
| 2013 | 3.10% | 3.10% | 0.99% | |
| 2014 | 2.38% | 2.38% | 1.69% |
Note what the effective tax rate increase would have been if we didn’t have a tax-stabilization reserve (RSR), as seen in the third column, e.g. in 2004, that tax rate of 6.90% would have been 9.62%. In this term of council, we have only had to dip into our reserves once, in 2011, and only by a small amount. For the past three years, we have not had to touch our tax stabilization reserve, i.e. the numbers in columns 1 and 2 are the same. If you look at the first three years, from 2004 to 2006, this is when a majority of council were “tax-cutting” right-wing conservative types, yet the cumulative tax rate was 16.74%, an average of 5.58%/year. For the four years from 2006 until 2010, the cumulative tax rate for Mayor Karen Farbridge and her supposed “tax-and-spend” council colleagues was 16.20%, less than for the three previous years, and the average was 4.05%/year. For the most recent three years, the cumulative tax rate was 10.78%, with an average of 2.695%. Figuratively, here is a visual representation:
As can be seen from the graph, since the start of Mayor Farbridge’s most recent terms of council, tax rates have been going DOWN, and becoming closer to the Consumer Price Index CPI). If the current trend of falling increases continues, they will be at or below the rate of inflation in two years. In effect, the right-wing council majority of the 2003-2006 term delivered less and cost more in terms of tax increases during their 3 years than the so-called “tax-and-spend” councils have in the following 8 years. For a comparison of Guelph’s tax rates relative to our comparators (cities of >100,000 people), done every year by an independent organisation, BMI Management Consulting INC., observe the following graph:
The yellow bars are considered “low-tax-range” cities, the blue are the “mid-tax-range” cities and the green bars are the “high-tax-range” cities. The red bar is the overall average and Guelph is deep purple; note that Guelph is less than the average, and in the mid-range, alongside its neighbouring cities Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo. The overblown and deceitful information about Guelph being one of the highest-taxed cities in Ontario is simply nonsense.
For other types of housing (senior executive and multi-residential) see the two graphs below:
In this figure, Guelph is just below the average, and in the mid-range, along with our neighbours Cambridge and Kitchener. Waterloo is actually in the high range for this category.
For multi-residential housing, Guelph is approximately the same as the average, but actually below our three neighbouring municipalities.
Municipal taxes are only 7% of overall taxes, and provide more than 200 of the day-to-day services residents require – in fact many more than do other levels of government. We give value for money! For example, we have built maintenance costs into all of our facilities. Which would you rather have, a slum landlord who keeps rents low but does no repairs and allows buildings to run down, or a landlord who builds small increases into rent costs, in order to maintain and upkeep buildings? The low-tax mantra of the right-wing conservatives has shown time and again that it just does not work. Look at what has been happening economically since this low-tax dogma became mainstream; the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is disappearing! Lowering taxes just means fewer services, and service cuts disadvantage the poor more than any other group.
P3s Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) have not been proven to offer any improvement, except for a greater risk for the public purse while the private sector walks away from failed services. As writer Greg Malone puts it “P3s should be called P12s – Public-Private Partnerships to Plunder the Public Purse to Pursue Policies of Peril to People and the Planet for all Posterity”. Privatization is not the answer either. Private sector companies begin with a low bid, but after a public sector organisation has locked into a contract, those low bids rise and end up costing more than the public sector, not to mention inferior service, a steep decline in accountability and loss of jobs for local residents in favour of strangers who do not live here. Think of some of the recent examples of public sector organisations devolving into the private sector; the bloated ORNGE air ambulance service is a prime example. Cam Guthrie is touting privatization of our award-winning waste-management system, of our innovative garbage collection system, of transit and HR services, and of everything else he can think of. This will benefit few and add to the costs for many.
However, I still believe that property taxes are the wrong way to fund municipal services. At least a part of municipal revenue should come from municipal income taxes, just as provincial and federal taxes fund provincial and federal services. By this means, municipal taxes would be based on income and therefore on ability to pay, a much more equitable system than property taxes. I agree with the Canada West Foundation-wherever the bulk of taxation is on property owners, the system will never work properly. The alternative, a municipal income tax system, would mean that we benefit from economic expansion, while seniors on fixed incomes and young families with modest incomes will not run the risk of losing their homes because of increasing property taxes.
Maggie Laidlaw 