Cities Need New Revenue Sources

Caught my eye recently:

Montreal has ideas to find more revenue.

Their Finance Committee spent 67 hours meeting with various city agencies working to cut their $400 million budget shortfall, reported the Toronto Star’s Andrew Chung.

Serendipitously, perhaps, while these meetings were going on, $300,000 in extra policing costs ensued when Montreal Canadien fans rioted in the streets. Then, in a moment of enlightenment some bright spark had an idea - make the hockey club play. Ah, pure genius.

Expect feeble excuses from the Hab’s front office like:

The individuals who broke store windows, looted stores and set police cars on fire were hooligans, not Canadien fans.

These hoolifans weren’t even at the game.

Les Canadiens pay more than $8 million in property taxes each year and bring many other economic benefits to the city.

Give me a break please.

Understand this: Municipalities are behind the eight ball. They need new revenue sources. My town, Burlington, got it right earlier this year when they decided to charge residents if firefighters had to attend their car accident. Unfortunately, council backed down.

But I’ve got a few other ideas.

Park Bench Fees

An elderly couple camps out for hours on the bench at my local park. Cute, you say? But this as an opportunity. After all it’s the city’s bench. Slap a fee on these folks. Use that bench in excess of 15 minutes you should pay appropriate user fees.

Street Hockey Permits

I like street hockey; hate it when residents want ball-hockey-playing kids off the road. But, if these kid’s parents had to pay for a street hockey permit the neighbours wouldn’t have grounds to complain and the fees would enrich city coffers. Call this a win win!

Excessive Constituent Calls

Some of you will know I was a councillor once. And, yes, I loved my constituents - all of them; well nearly all of them. But there were a few, a very few, who demanded a lot of my time. Of course, many other constituents never bothered me. Wouldn’t it be fair put in place a charge against constituents who call or e-mail you more than say once a week? All these contacts could be calculated and put on the bothersome constituent’s tax bill as a user fee.

These are but a few ideas. You’ll have some too. Like garage sales. There were 46 advertised in the Burlington Post last Friday. Can you imagine how many “underground” ones were going on? What an opportunity if the city could just get back some revenue….The possibilities are endless.

Shipwreck

With my family I recently spent some time in the Galapagos - an amazing place.

I've been gathering my thoughts notes and photos as I think there are some lessons to be learned from "the enchanted islands" when this past week a ship sunk there with 16 Canadians on board. Everyone is OK. News reports indicate the passengers, who lost their passports in the mishap, will be returning to Toronto from Quito (tomorrow) Sunday.

The ship, the Alta, is a modern luxury motor sailor about 150 feet long. Hard to believe it could sink. A lighthouse malfunction may be to blame.

Here is a picture of the Alta that I took from my cabin. We were about to head by panga (Zodiac) to North Seymour, the island in the background, on this warm Wednesday February 24th.

Shipwrecks wouldn't normally enter into a blog on municipal politics but I thought this was interesting.

Last Call

A group I'm involved with is showing a movie this Thursday that looks at
urban renewal and its impact on the poor.

The evening is entitled "Hamilton’s Last Call" and includes a panel discussion.

The movie tells what happened when aggressive developers buy a century-old, flophouse - Toronto's Gladstone Hotel. When the hotel is tarted up to become a hot spot for the arts long-time staff and residents begin a five-year struggle to survive.

“Last Call at the Gladstone Hotel” is an award winning film directed by Neil Graham, & Derreck Roemer.

We are showing it in Hamilton because the same thing is happening here with little public concern for the fact that the people who live in places like the Gladstone often end up on the street when "renewal" takes place.

Please consider attending this free event:

Thursday March 4th
7 pm - 9 pm
at the SKYDRAGON CENTRE
27 King William Street
Hamilton

If you can't make it but want to see the movie let me know and I'll make it available to you.

TERM LIMITS

Case Ootes who has served the residents of East York for 21 years recently announced that he will not seek re-election. Somewhat surprisingly after all this time Ootes has decided that term limits are the way to go. That's one of the beauties of municipal politics. You just keep learning.

Locally three members of Burlington (Ontario) Council complete their first four year term this year. Of the veterans Councillor Rick Craven will have served ten years come the October election. Jack Dennison and Carol D'Amelio are coming up on 16 years. Councillor John Taylor arrived in November 1988 - the same municipal election year that voters sent Mr. Ootes to East York Council. One could argue that this Burlington Council has a good balance - experienced members and some rookies bringing new ideas.


Like other flavours of the month term limits was a hot topic in these parts 15 years ago. That’s when a movement to have smaller councils was in vogue. Burlington was the most successful shrinker in those “less government is better government days.” The head local shrinker, now proroguing MP, Mike Wallace led the charge to take council size from 17 to 7. My recollection is that Wallace also championed term limits (6 - 9 years) in those days. I'm not sure what his position was when he left for Ottawa after 12 years of local council duty. (Others remember that then rookie Dennison favoured two terms and out but I'm not sure. I wasn’t taking notes.)


I'd always thought that limiting Councillors to two or three terms was a bad idea ‘cause the electorate ought to decide when it is time for someone to go. If voters think a councillor has over stayed his welcome, is coasting or perhaps has become palsy walsy with the development community there’s a simple solution - vote for someone else.

I think I'm changing my mind, though. Perhaps I’m just following the crowd because I believe most voters, if asked, would say eight years (two terms) of municipal service is enough.

Long serving members can find something else to do. If they want to return they can try again next time.

What do you think?

P.S. I’m pleased that Walter Mulkewich has his blog up and running again (see frame the issues) I’m not sure where the 21 year Council veteran and former mayor stands on term limits.

Here We Go Again

A couple of weeks ago the Environment Commissioner came out with his annual report on the province’s Action Plan to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions(www.eco.on.ca). It is clear from the analysis that the emission reduction targets that were set for 2014 and 2020 will not be met. Urban sprawl and private autos are the big culprits.

Thirty-one percent of all emissions are attributable to the transportation sector. Not only is that sector the biggest emitter but it is increasing the most relative to the other sectors identified (e.g. electricity/ heat generation and industry etc..)

The transportation sector has seen a huge increase in vehicle emissions from "light duty gasoline trucks" like SUV’s, vans and pickups – 123% since 1990.

The Commissioner thinks we have to seriously consider road pricing to address our frightful greenhouse gas problems. Road pricing would take into account the true cost of our transportation infrastructure and could reduce congestion and improve our environmental conditions. Properly implemented it would be an important reform towards a fairer tax system. But is road pricing on the political agenda today?

Take my town Burlington (Ontario). Their idea of pricing strategies runs about as deep as Sarah Palin’s grasp of foreign policy matters. It goes like this: If you don’t run buses then you save money. Using that logic today (Jan 1) Burlington is the only Lakeshore GTA community not running buses.

We are repeating ourselves in lamenting this lack of recognition of the damage that personal automobile use is doing to our environment. We won’t get into the equity issue as we’ve done that before (see archives 2/16/08.)

Any ideas?

HAPPINESS - IT MUST BE THE SEASON

They were spending like the proverbial drunken sailor on the good ship Burlington Monday past.

Sixty million loonies for the hospital.

More money – perhaps $9 million – for the former General Brock school property.

Pan Am commitments toward City Park near Waterdown which will, history tells us, be way over cost estimates as is the norm with multi-event games.

But like that sailor our self-professed parsimonious pols were in seventh heaven over their spending spree or so it appeared to this channel surfing blogger who had earlier succumbed to too many Christmas specials and Tiger updates.

Councillor D’Amelio patiently explained to observers and your obviously misinformed correspondent that the media has it wrong because the big projects almost always come in under budget.

That and the season undoubtedly account for all the happiness and comes as a great relief as I had worried that nobody knew where all the money to pay for these projects would be found.


PAN AM GAMES

Taking the Sherwood Park location off the table means the Games site is narrowed down to one option - which is really no option, isn’t it?

City Park’s development needs approval from the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) who have designated the land for recreation uses and facilities.

The NEC Plan assumes that any development will have “minimal adverse effect on the environment” and “not exceed the carrying capacity of the site.”

So as I mentioned everyone was so happy with the site and excited about all the money to be spent on this and other projects. You’d have to be a real pessimist to imagine that approval for a stadium, two lit artificial turf fields, one additional field, and lots of bells and whistles adjacent to a Natural Environment area, an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI) and 3,000 homes won’t be all wrapped up before the Seaway closes for the season.

Doing the Math

While the Pan Am Games numbers didn’t compute for this blogger another “math’ exercise I participated in did add up.

Well, not really.

On November 18th a mixed group of 14 Burlington residents and service providers did some math at a breakfast meeting held at Community Development Halton.
Toronto’s The Stop Community Food Centre and the Campaign to Put Food in the Budget created this web based budget tool to promote understanding of poverty issues. Do the Math poses a simple question:

Does a single person on social assistance receive enough income to live with health and dignity?

A survey allows you to determine what you would need to make ends meet and to compare your results to what a single person on social assistance receives each month.

How often does one need a haircut? Dental care might not be a priority. But can you find a job with bad teeth? Do I really need that large double, double at $1.72?

These are but a few of the questions/issues the group considered.

When they added it was determined that it would cost $1,742 a month for a single person to get by with a bachelor apartment in Burlington.

Compare that to the maximum amount of:

*$572 per month a single Ontario Works recipient gets.
or
*1,020 a single individual on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) would receive.

Or consider the fact that a full- time minimum wage earner would have only $1429 in before tax income.

One participant noted that the gap was “astronomical.” Another questioned the sense of social assistance policies if the rates established clearly aren’t doing any good.
Over 3,000 people around the province have signed the online petition or a postcard that calls for government to ‘do the math’ too, and overhaul the system that sets rates, as well as for an immediate increase of $100 as a first step to meet basic needs. About half of provincial Members of Parliament have been involved in this project to date.

At long last the provincial government is beginning a promised review of social assistance. Hopefully, changes are on the way.