Stephen Vance, Editor
I’ve covered municipal politics in this town for long enough to know that the relatively small property tax increase of three percent (with proposed budget enhancements included) will infuriate some folks, it will anger some others, and while most people will simply shrug their shoulders and cough up the extra fifty bucks next year, there will also be some for whom even that small an increase will hurt – but enjoy this one while you can because I can only see the annual rate increases growing in the years to come.
Don’t blame council or a bloated municipal staff however; instead you can blame the roads and bridges you drive on each day, along with the pipes that reside below, and a host of other municipal infrastructure assets that can’t and won’t last forever.
Meaford’s Treasurer didn’t mince words at council on Monday when he conceded that five percent rate increases could very well seem like little more than a pipe dream (no pun intended) once Meaford (along with every other municipality in the province) finally completes and implements its provincially mandated asset management plan. Ten percent annual increases to property tax bills is far more likely to be the reality, and it’s going to hurt like hell, but what options do we really have?
A significant number of all of these glorious roads and bridges that we enjoy today were built half a century ago or more and are already at, or will soon arrive at the end of their useful lives, and we as a society haven’t done a very good job over the past few decades of planning for the repair and replacement of all that hard-earned infrastructure. As a result, if we want to retain all of that infrastructure, we have some painful, expensive days ahead.
My own theory – and it’s just my theory, I accept that there are other views – is that our nation, and our neighbours to the south, all pulled together in a socialist frenzy (yes, there’s that word some people hate so much) in the early decades of the last century to build a public infrastructure that included not just roads and bridges, but schools, hospitals, libraries, community centres and swimming pools. And while all those socialist initiatives created solid, well-paying jobs that fed into a capitalist system that created even more solid and well-paying jobs, this resulted in arguably the wealthiest generation this continent has ever known, and helped to build a society with a standard of living envied around the world. However, we then disbanded, and started looking out for ourselves rather than our community.
As a result, special interests of all sorts gained in popularity, and in clout, and everyone lobbied for whatever special project that held the most interest or benefit for themselves – sexy initiatives like pumping public money into professional sporting facilities, or making Taj Mahals out of public buildings when a box with a door and some windows would have sufficed, and maintaining what we had worked so hard to build became somewhat of an afterthought, a problem for another day, a rainy day perhaps.
Well, grab your umbrella, because I fear it will soon begin pouring.
As I’ve written previously, in our own tiny little corner of the world we’re facing the reality of having to find a way to fund $30 million in required bridge rehabilitation and repair over the next ten years, $190 million to address road infrastructure needs over the next 50 years, and $54 million to fund water and waste-water infrastructure needs over the next 25 years.
Roads and bridges aside (you know, that boring stuff), we also have an ageing arena and community centre that, while they’ve still got some life in them, won’t last forever, a library that’s falling apart, a fifty year-old public swimming pool, and a harbour that could use some attention – and if we want to keep any of those luxuries that we’ve come to regard as necessities, then the money will have to come from somewhere.
Some quick math will tell you that for bridges, roads, and water and waste-water infrastructure alone, this municipality needs to be spending more than $8 million per year. If we had to start funding it tomorrow without any help from other levels of government, we’d need in excess of a 50 percent property tax increase (and the real problem is that we needed to start funding that infrastructure maintenance not tomorrow, but many yesterdays ago).
And don’t be fooled by grants from upper levels of government – all that money still comes out of the same pockets – so one way or another, we’re either going to have to start abandoning some of our infrastructure, or we’re going to have to dig very deep to bring our infrastructure up to snuff.
We could very well be begging for the sweet relief of a ten percent property tax increase a decade from now, so whatever the 2017 increase turns out to be – whether it’s two percent, or a not-out-of-the-realm-of-possibility four percent, enjoy it while you can.
