Is your municipality thinking about a property tax increase this year? Chances are they don’t have to. A new report by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation outlines ten initiatives that municipalities should pursue before taking more money from your pocket.
First, create some competition. When the City of Winnipeg opened up a portion of garbage collection to competition in 2005, costs went down by 36 per cent while complaints dropped by 20-25 per cent. A better service at a lower cost –a win win for taxpayers.
Municipalities could save substantially by contracting out services – park maintenance, snow removal and road repair to name a few. Further, like Indianapolis did, let existing workers bid to provide the work, they probably already know where to trim the fat.
Salaries and benefits should also be reviewed. One study suggested that nation-wide, salaries and benefits for municipal employees are upwards of 35 per cent higher than similar positions in the private sector. These should be scaled back before increasing taxes.
Third, recruit volunteers to provide more services. Sacramento, California regularly has volunteers performing office work, cleaning zoo cages, stenciling “no dumping” on sewer grates and a wide variety of other tasks. Saskatchewanians are a charitable bunch, why not see if some would like to help out?
Before simply building new capital projects, municipalities should do like Chilliwack, B.C. did and look at partnering with the private sector. By doing so, Chilliwack calculated a $7 million savings for local taxpayers on their new arena partnership.
As property taxes are an archaic form of taxation - completely insensitive to income – user fees should be considered. New fees shouldn’t simply be introduced, they should be coupled with a corresponding reduction in property taxes. That way, non-essential services like libraries could be paid for, at least in part, by those that use them.
What about better planning between municipalities and other levels of government? Vancouver’s Britannia library model is a great example to consider. Instead of having municipal libraries just metres from school libraries, the Britannia Library is located in a school, but is also open to the general public.
Number seven is an easy one, take a look at all the land and assets owned by the municipality and sell off what isn’t needed.
Number eight is also straight forward – make sure your municipality is focusing on core municipal services. Subsidizing golf courses, running fitness centres and grants for arts groups are the types of services that municipalities should back away from.
Another revenue idea is to pursue corporate sponsorship. Every year the City of Calgary raises about $1 million through corporate sponsorships
Finally, new technology can help cut costs dramatically. For example, the District of Columbia is using free online software from Google. Instead of using expensive off-the-shelf software, they’re saving taxpayers $550 per employee every year.
In most cases, there is more work to do at the municipal level before raising taxes. If your local municipality is looking to dig into your wallet this year, send them a copy of the “Beggar’s Checklist” report – available at
taxpayer.com.
