Loading ...
Area Rating Debate
In last week’s Ancaster News, a citizen wrote a letter to the editor that I and other Councillors vote based on the principle of “What’s in it for me?” (relating to subsidizing local calling for outlying communities).
I have to disagree with the letter writer in that we should subsidize local calling to the outlying communities, however, this would fly in the face of decisions that have been made in the past promoted by a majority of councillors from the outlying areas (that they should only pay for services that they receive).
You can’t have it both ways by demanding that you only pay for services that you receive and then support receiving a service and pushing the cost of implementing this system on the taxpayers of the old city of Hamilton, (which receives no direct benefit.)
One tax rate
I believe that within all urban centres there should be one tax rate and I wholeheartedly support area rating for rural residents. The City of Ottawa at amalgamation divided its tax system into urban and rural components, which is a system I support. In the old City of Hamilton, Ward 8 residents within an urban centre did not always receive the same level of transit or have as many culture and recreation facilities as the lower city, however we paid the same level of taxes. That is how a community is “built.”
We must get away from our divisions and focus on our common interest — to have the City of Hamilton realize its full potential with our partners in the former outlying communities.
Do you agree? Disagree? Would like to hear your comments on area rating….
Personally I am sick and tird of all the negativity re old city vs. new city. If we can’t have a unified phone calling system throughout all of hamilton how can we realistically ever expect to come together as one city? So it flies in the face of past decisions – so what. We give them one, now they’ll owe us one. It’s also about time the former town names were removed from highway signs and we become simply known as Hamilton. It should be enough to remember them by changing the ward numbers to names – ie Ancaster, Dundas, West Mountain, East Hamilton etc. I mean only a few know were ward 13 or ward 11 are.
Thank you for your comments. We are actually looking at changing the numbers over to names and will be coming forward in the future. What I was suggesting with Area Rating is that we need to go beyond the phone issue and need to reform our entire tax structure in a simple Urban or Rural taxation rate regardless which of which community it is, be it, Ancaster or Hamilton or Dundas, etc.
Great to hear your support. Area rating does nothing but enforce divisions in service levels (particularly transit). We’ll never be able to join our various communities (ideologically, or infrastructurally) until we unify the urban/suburban tax policies.