Councillor Lisa Helps is contemptuous of what she calls the ‘vagaries of the market,’ maintaining that freezing the mill rate in Victoria would inhibit the City from meeting its budget requirements.
Without mentioning any of her rivals for the Mayoral position she seeks, Lisa Helps is clearly addressing Ida Chong’s ideas about freezing the mill rate, and suggesting those ideas are too drastic to implement:
http://www.lisahelpsvictoria.ca/property_taxes_101
“Freezing the Mill Rate is Not Freezing Taxes
Freezing the mill rate means that if the assessed value of properties goes up, taxes will go up. If the assessed value of property goes down, taxes will go down. In both cases, control of city finances is surrendered to the vagaries of the market. Property owners could find themselves paying dramatically more, or the City’s budget might have a hole blown in it. And, worst of all, we wouldn’t know it until the year in question. Remember, the City only gets the assessment information in January of the budget year. This is no way to govern an organization that is run with public dollars.
Finally, freezing the mill rate would prevent the City from continuing to re-balance between residential and business taxes. In 2010, the business mill rate was 3.59 to 1 versus the residential mill rate. Today it is 3.18 to 1. We’ve made a bit of progress in the past few years and I will keep working on this for the next four.”
She is completely status quo on residential property taxes, wanting to reduce the tax burden on the business property taxpayers, and ‘re-balance’ it with an increase in residential property tax, in other words, which may explain why she has not addressed the concerns of a frustrated Fairfield taxpayer who left a comment at her website…17 days ago.
If this embarrassing delay in attending to a critical comment by a potential voter on her own website is any indication of the speed and care that would be taken by a Mayor Lisa Helps, well, let us just say she clearly needs more help in Real Life Economics 101 …
– Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, LA ROSA Editor
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Richard Brunt commented 17 days ago
StasCan tells us that our real incomes (after inflation) have not moved since the 1990s. Yet City of Victoria workers continue to get generous raises. I’ve just heard they got 2% each year for 3 years. Inflation is 1.4%. Please, please tell me you are not giving city workers wage increases well in excess of inflation, every year. If that is true, I want to know if you supported it.
Secondly, CFAX reported that the new police chief is receiving well over $200,000 per year, and that this is $20,000 more than the last police chief. Did you vote for that?
Every year, city council seems to take great pride in raising property taxes in the order of ‘only’ 3% or 3.5%. That is not success – that is failure. 3% is over 100% greater that the inflation rate.
Taxes are over $5,000 on my modest Fairfield home. It is unaffordable. I want serious cuts, and reduced taxes, after 10 years of astonishing tax increases. Not more tax increases tied to inflation. That goes nowhere near far enough.
I don’t know what your polling says, but around here, people are talking about just a few things – taxes, the bridge (taxes), and sewage treatment (taxes).
LA ROSA 