I hate paying for things that don’t return their promised value.
I used to feel that way about airport-improvement fees.
I was never sure I would ever see any benefit from doing so. However, if you have been to our airport recently, you can see that the fees that everyone has paid over the years have actually paid off. It is a much nicer place than it used to be and it has started to look like a major city airport.
I wish I could feel the same way about the civic taxes I pay. For as long as I can remember, it has seemed as if we have paid about five per cent more each year for the pleasure of living here. And that doesn’t include the taxes that are disguised as user fees and utility charges.
I don’t mind paying taxes. I would pay even more taxes if I could see a real return.
Is it just me or does it seem like we pay more in taxes each year and really don’t see too much in the way of real improvements in our city?
Our downtown doesn’t look significantly different than it did 20 years ago save for the new art gallery and the Windspear. The LRT is longer than it used to be, but that has taken more than 30 years to achieve.
So where has all our tax money gone? I’m not sure that I have ever gotten a clear idea of where new tax dollars go and what benefit we get.
The one thing that I am sure of is that areas within the civic administration know how to build empires.
Right now about 58 per cent of the budget goes to employee costs.
What on earth do all those people do? If we take the police, transit and outside workers out of the mix, we still have a lot of people who take our tax money and in return provide us with … what? I don’t have an answer to that question.
Our current mayor has often expressed frustration about what things cost and how many civic employees are required to provide the services we really need.
One can only hope that his frustration turns into action on the part of our next mayor.
With a little luck, he or she will make the administration’s justification of our civic payroll a top priority.
