City council should consider small tax increase instead of raising facility user fees

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on November 18, 2017.

City council’s public works committee put forward a number of user fee increases last week to help plug the fiscal hole left by declining natural gas revenues.

This gap needs certainly needs to be filled one way or another, but user fee hikes tend to hit the worst off people the hardest and should only be used sparingly.

The hikes include a $10 per session increase for swimming lessons, a $5 per session increase for educational programs and field trips to the Esplanade, a $40 per hour increase for ice rentals and a $1.50 increase per meal at the Strathcona Seniors Centre.

Council is already considering raising property taxes one per cent to make up for the cancelled $650,000 cut to transit service.

It would be wiser to double that tax increase, rather than force less fortunate Hatters to pay more up front for the services they use.

As Coun. Kris Samraj, who sits on the public services committee, told the News last week, the issue at hand is striking a balance between taxation and fees.

“The options before us regarding user fees are higher taxes that everybody pays, and you can have more accessibility to these services, or you can have slightly lower taxes and higher fees for people that use them,” said Samraj.

This is undoubtedly true. The Financially Fit program that the previous council committed itself to necessitates this tough choice.

But the entire purpose of taxation is to have the broader community pay for services that not everyone uses, but are a benefit to society at large.

Take seniors’ meals for example. Elderly people made our community what it is. It’s wholly reasonable for the property owners of today to subsidize their sustenance.

But, as Samraj said, it’s about striking a balance. We are, after all, in tough fiscal times. That is a reality that cannot be ignored.

Coun. Jim Turner, who sits on the committee with Samraj, told the News that the goal of the fees is to unload the costs as much as possible from the public to the people who use the services.

“We’ll never get to 100 per cent, but we’re trying to get a little closer to what the fees actually cost to run the facilities,” he said.

The goal should be the opposite — for the government to subsidize as much as it can, while leaving what’s left for users to pay.

If this requires a modest property tax hike, then so be it.

True, nobody wants to pay more taxes, but people also don’t want to continuously pay more for the services they use, particularly if they’re struggling financially.

The root cause of this problem, and this is true throughout the province, is our historic dependence on natural resource revenues.

When times are good, this allows us to have both low taxes and extensive public services, which appears to be a win-win until times get tough.

The unpredictability of non-renewable energy revenues, along with the increasing emphasis on fighting climate change, should serve as an incentive to diversify our economy and invest in renewable energy.

We’re lucky to have abundant wind and solar resources in southern Alberta.

It’s about time we put them to use.