So with all these new line item taxes why isn’t the overall property tax rate going down? The tax rate increases in PG are off the charts if one includes all these new line item taxes in addition to the ever increasing property tax bill. I often wonder how can people afford all of these increases and why does everyone just accept it?

And yet we are still one of the most highly in debt cities in the country.

A real problem for PG in an era of the lowest interest rates in history is that they can only go up from here. PG has a huge property tax risk associated with the cities bubble of debt that could easily wipe out any gains made by all these new sources of revenue, and that really makes PG a risky place to invest.

At least in cities on Vancouver Island that hold little to no debt, when interest rates go up they should have no impact on their property taxes. For anyone on a fixed income that lower interest rate risk has to count for something. In PG however property tax risk is just a bottomless pit feeding poor city planning and massive debts.

I suspect this latest new tax all came about as a result of the citizens of PG turning down the failed dyke agenda, and this is just a new way to push that through.

Property taxes might not seem like the most pressing issue to consider while you’re searching for a home, but you’ll definitely want to know what your costs will be before you buy. It’s especially critical if you’re planning to purchase near the top of your affordability range.

Property tax won’t go down. That would defeat there purpose of adding other taxes. But all aside with all this extra taxation why are my services not improved? I’ve had 4 power outages this month. City doesn’t look any better. Road drains still clogged, streets still dirty and full of holes. Oh but the mayor and city are still heavily overpaid, she has her assistants and whoever and were still getting them winter games! Now before people start bashing me. I like the winter games and all that Olympic stuff but I don’t think billions of dollars needs to be spent to see who runs the fastest.

I think the word you may have been searching for was “foisted” not “fostered.”

I use water barrels under all my drain spouts to catch all my rain water, so that I can water all my gardens and green house, so I guess this won’t apply to me??

Basically what I see, is tax on taxes…how else are we going to keep paying quarter million dollar wages to some nestled in City Hall? Until someone has a strong enough spine to deal with the glut currently going on at City Hall (I’m not talking about clerks and those that man shovels and lawnmowers) but the upper echelons that are sucking the tax payers of Prince George dry. We will continue to see “creative” thinking on how to pick the pockets of Prince George Tax Payers! :(

Casey you will be charged double! Once for the water once more for hoarding it.

This is basically a 5% increase on property taxes.

I don’t use the system .. I am like Casey and there is no sewer drains on our street – still waiting for sewer to come through – on septic tank.

Maybe Green was mis-quoted on statement of savings of 10% in every dept.

What was really said was an increase of 10% in every dept.

The gang at city hall is totally out of control and what is frustrating is not one damn thing can be done about it.

This new tax is apparantly to come after the next election. Well, voters lets let it end there and then. By the way Zum 14, they don’t run, they ski and snowboard the fastest at the Winter Games.

Single line item increases in taxes, or changing a basic tax to a utility tax is just one more way to glean money out of an overburdened taxpayer.

The City Councilors, especially those on the Finance and Audit Committee should be ashamed of themselves for putting forward these types of increases. These types of increases are used (as said in the article) to hide the actual amount of tax increase we are receiving.

While these increases are taking effect, the City is putting money into a Capital Projects Fund, from the sale of City Lands, which will be used for some Capital Project (perhaps a Performing Arts Centre) .

The obvious questions is. Why cant the money from the sale of City Land, which was purchased with tax dollars, be used for maintenance of City utilities etc;??.

What we have here is a clear manipulation of tax dollars to get money into position to be used for special interest groups, with the cost being born by the average taxpayer, who is not (remotely) involved in the process, but who has to pay the extra taxes.

These are the types of things that must be remembered at the next election. That is the only time that we can actually make a difference, and if we fail to do so, we will (guaranteed) get more of the same.

Well well… People are just starting to realize that all the infrastructure we enjoy and largely take for granted is expensive to build and maintain, and not getting any cheaper.

I will give a bit of a nod to the current Mayor and Council in that they have finally started to acknowledge it and are realizing we can’t have it all and low taxes too. Of course, this realization makes them unpopular.

If you think that voting in different people is going to make the infrastructure funding problem go away, well… I have an expensive-to-maintain bridge to sell you.

JB is right. Across Canada and the US infrastructure is old and/or neglected. Governments at every level are broke. With some of the highest homeownership numbers in the world, Canadian homeowners are ripe for the picking. This will only get worse……and not just in PG. Although we do get screwed a little more than comparable cities.

Election is coming. Green doesn’t have a prayer of being re elected so she is doing all of the unpopular crap and taking the blame. What does she have to lose?

The 50 million in salaries has to come from somewhere. Anybody who thinks that all this extra revenue will go to the infrastructure is just kidding themselves. We have a trough that needs to be topped up!

Time to move to Abbotsford.
Cheers

Time to move to Abbotsford.
Cheers

I will pay for a rainwater tax as soon as the city buys the airspace above my home .

Much as I’m not a fan of Green – especially the way she tried/tries to bulldoze over the Haldi Rd people, the blame for this lies at the feet of distinguished mayors like Backhouse and Kinsley who failed to raise taxes to pay for infrastructure, and failed to build things right the first time. Sure, there might be some fat at city hall, but not enough to cover the cost of replacing aging sewers, water systems, and road systems. So like it or not it has to be done, and the question is just how the cost is going to be allocated among the many different types of taxpayers in PG. Each group of course will have compelling arguments why it shouldn’t be them.

It’s just insult added to injury that while we have these serious problems, previous councils chose to spend money on fancy buildings and fancy winter games.

I think in this internet age, where people of all ages know how to use a computer, it’s time we drove democracy down closer to the people, and requiring all expenditures of over a certain amount to be submitted to the population for approval, via internet voting – and I feel sorry for those who will be disenfranchised because they don’t know how to use a computer, but you don’t have a voice as it is, so this is better than the status quo.

Seems to me we spent millions of dollars on projects that could have been delayed or not done at all, and spent this money on infrastructure and maintenance.

Cameron St. Bridge, Airport Runway, Boundry Road, Police Station, Community Energy System, New Office building on 18th Avenue for purchasing ($3 Million) just to name a few.

This is not a question of not enough tax dollars, it is a question of where our tax dollars are being spent. Next we have $500,000.00 upgrade to Civic Centre, and perhaps $15 Million for a Performing Arts Centre.

Its pretty obvious that we have lots of money. Its also pretty obvious that we spend it in the wrong places.

That is **obvious** to all but JB

Hey… wait a minute… tax monies have been collected all along over the years. You cannot just blame the people that are no longer there now, (no matter how poor of a job they did at the time). It is always easier to spend money above ground where the visual satisfaction makes the expenditure justified… even if it is really, really stupid. One example would be the fountain that was built by the old swimming pool which became a urinal for the free downtown citizens.

This new storm water tax is burglary. You are about to burgled folks… and burgled excessively, whether you enjoy it or not. (spell check and autocorrect are wonderful). :-))

V.

Many people in PG want the amenities and services associated with a city that has 100,000 people, but they only want to pay for the amenities and services associated with a city that has 10,000 people.

Now that said, I think Palopu is also partially correct. I think there has been a considerable amount of what I would classify as questionable spending in PG over the years and this most certainly doesn’t help matters.

It’s common sense really. If you want a nice city you have to fund it. Along the way you hope that the people running the place have the brains to balance the needs and the wants (while avoiding the “huh?” spending) and to ensure that things are managed in a fiscally responsible manner. That means looking at all options for funding city operations including cost cutting and revenue growth.

To me, tax increases like these do nothing but reinforce that the people at the city are grasping at straws to come up with quick revenue streams to offset the short-term cost increases and issues that they are facing. It’s the financial equivalent of “putting out fires”.

I don’t think these people really have a comprehensive economic plan, nor do I think they are competent enough to put one together. They simply react.

“That is **obvious** to all but JB”

I’m not sure why you **targetted** me, but it seems many **agree** with me in this thread alone, **Palopu**.

That being said, there’s no question that there have been bad decisions made over the past few Mayors and Councils. The people who voted them in have to take some responsibility in that we all believed that we could have it all and low taxes.

No question it has been a slow and rude awakening for many people.

In certain areas of PG the rain water off the roof goes directly into the storm sewer, so I can see how they can tax those places. But for other people most of the rain water off the roof either feeds the gardens or lawns.

That said it past years if the City needed to upgrade the sewer line, storm line, sidewalks, or roads you paid by your frontage. Which is not always fair, I know that when they add the snow clearing to my utility bill I will pay more than my neighbour as I have a larger frontage but they are in the inside curve and the City spends more time in the curve than they do for the rest of the street

There is this great site where you can get municipal statistics collected by the provincial government for all of B.C.. I went there and looked at two schedules, one for municipal populations, to find similar sized communities to Prince George, and the other was for total taxes and fees paid for a representative homeowner in each of the municipalities. For 2013, the representative home value used for Prince George was $218,897. I picked the 4 municipalities with the next lowest populations and the 4 next highest populations to come up with this list of TOTAL municipal taxes and fees. This process took me 5 minutes. I’ll give the site address later on in this post.

Here they are in population order from lowest to highest.

Port Coquitlam $4,089
New Westminister (worst) 5,220
Maple Ridge 4,025
Chiliwack (lowest) 3,231
Prince George(second) 3,550
Victoria 4,652
Nanaimo (third) 3,606
Kamloops 3,828
North Vancouver 4,819

So, Prince George has the second lowest overall municipal taxes & fees cost of those 9 communities. The average bill $4,113 is 16% higher than the bill we pay. This is to say nothing of the fact that all of these communities live in much warmer climates that we do and don’t have to shell out for snow removal like we do. Not even to mention either, that Victoria, our capital City blasts their untreated sewage into the pacific ocean. They don’t take the time to treat it like we do.

No, I think we got it pretty good here and I’m getting pretty sick and tired of the sniveling about taxes on this site. Don’t like it, go move to one of these other communities, if you can afford to buy a home there and get a job that pays what you can get here.

I’m not a big fan of our Council, in fact, I wouldn’t hire some of them to brew my coffee. They make some horrible decisions as far as I’m concerned, but every once in a while they get something right. This is one of them. If you read the information about the reasons they’re doing this and why they’re going about it in this manner you might be less confused. Yes, our infrastructure is crumbling and we’re just starting to set aside for its eventual replacement. This is being undertaken for the expressed purpose of avoiding growing our debt burden, which is interest bearing people. Your utility fees will be directed toward a reserve, not general revenue. So your general tax bill will stop funding storm. True, they need to raise more money to replace infrastructure without incurring debt, but this isn’t a shell game as some suggest. It might be to those who can’t track a simple document but it’s not. They’ve been very clear about what they’re doing and why, just as with the water/sewer/garbage utilities; another sound decision by Council. Doing the right thing isn’t for the faint of heart sometimes, so I shudder to think what our City would eventually look like under the leadership of some of those that spout off here regularly in the most unintelligible way.

Want to peruse some municipal statistics on your own, here is the site address:
http://www.cscd.gov.bc.ca/lgd/index.htm

The rant continues…

The other day I was browsing the Shaw website, thinking I might get cable hooked up for the winter. I just about fell over backwards when I saw what they were offering for TV & Internet Combos (comes with home phone too.

They have 4 price points:
$79.90 (first 2 months) then $119.90
$109.90 (first 2 months) then $154.90
$129.90 (first 2 months) then $174.90
$159.90 (first 2 months) then $209.90

I won’t bore you with what they offer you at those rates. You can go check for yourself if you like. On an annual basis, for the first year, with taxes these 4 packages would cost the following:
$1,522
$1,981
$2,250
$2,709

3 Grand for predominantly entertainment!!! So you can waste a thousand hours of your life every year watching a bunch of B.S.. That’s nuts. But people get all torqued up about paying a $400 utility bill to have water/sewer/garbage services to your house. Then there are the bozos who I see idling their way through the local Tim Hortons lineup to spend $5-10 bucks a day for coffee or whatever the hell else people buy there. Even if you only did that 150 days out of the year, that’s $750 – $1,500 a year on crap. Nah, I go no sympathy, none. There is lots of money in this town and the stark cold reality is that if you can’t absorb a $50 or $100 increase in your property tax bill every year then you’re living beyond your means and you should seriously think about moving to a more affordable place. Or budget your spending better.

Geez, tell us how you really feel Sine Nomine, LOL!

BTW, I liked your posts ;)

Thumbs up for Sine’s posts as well.

Careful though, that kind of thinking will get you targetted by the usual suspects.

Don’t have a problem paying taxes if they aren’t WASTED!. I have video of the city plowing my street twice last winter when the pavement was bare! And now I have to pay more for snow removal because the retards don’t know that they don’t have to scrape bare pavement! They already have enough money they just have to spend it properly.

Sine Nomine. What a line your putting out to-day.

Firstly your comparisons for representative homeowners in different areas is based of the average price of a home, that in fact has no bearing on the median wage of the people who live in these cities, nor does it take into account other considerations such as.

1. The high price of heating during the winter months which could be three times higher that some of your comparative cities.

2. The higher price for gasoline up until Costco had the prices reduced.

3. The higher cost of groceries and other commodities due to higher transportation costs, etc.

4. The higher price for vehicles. Approx $1500.00 difference between Pr George and Greater Vancouver prices.

5. Because there are a lot of people in Prince George (mainly Government workers, and Union workers) who make high wages, and a huge number of people in the wholesale, retail, and (other) business’s that make low wages, we have a median wage $40,000.00 per year. However we do not know how many people are actually well below the median. Nor do we know how many people are on pensions, or limited incomes.

It is the people at or below the median that are having difficulty paying these high taxes. Especially for services that could be described as **shitty** at best.

So it has nothing to do with living beyond one’s means. It is all about being taxed beyond one’s ability to pay.

If we were to assess City taxes based on income you Sine Nomine and others like you would be the first to start bitching about taxes. The fact that you are probably overpaid and under worked seems to give you the impression that you can dictate your less than perfect grasp of a problematic situation on others, to the point that you suggest that they leave their homes.

Take a moment and try to see the big picture.

Palopu,
Quite navel gazing at the stats………….the market for housing, fuel, groceries, etc is a reflection of our ability to pay and thus affordability. We make more per household than almost everyone in BC.
Enough already of the poor me stuff.

If you think too much you might catch a cold.

I think the unknown might read what Sine Nomine has to say and think yes that makes sense. Its an elegant way to look down on others and push a regressive taxation agenda.

I strongly disagree with the 1970’s notion that we are an employment income based economy where each town is an apples to apples comparison. The percentage of finance income counted as GDP has more than doubled since the 1970’s. The people working factory floors has dwindled and yet GDP has grown by leaps and bounds. This tell us that wealth is not just a factor of employment income averages. We may have people working for an income here in PG, but I can also suggest that the wealth in Vancouver for example is not related to working incomes.

To say that all can just cancel their cable bill to pay an extra $100 a year in property taxes is asinine when its put forward as an ‘intelligible argument’ to justify gross incompetence at city hall.

Truth be told we are consistently bombarded with statistics to justify paying more taxes, and are told the taxes we pay are not out of line with other communities. I just have to call bull on that… its complete crap. Clearly the fluoride in the PG water is taking its effects.

Lets try to actually compare apples to apples using the statistics referenced by Sine Nomine. It took me about an hour but the findings are profound.

I used the (General Purpose Assessment Values from 2011. Divided by… the 2006 Population census numbers). Lets just call this an assessment value ratio to population.

The flat taxers should love this, but they won’t because it exposes their lie. Its the most logical way to even out the wealth to taxes imposed. If its alright to impose flat taxes, then it should be alright to compare those taxes to wealth as well. The ability to pay is an important factor here… when taxes in PG have gone up 50% in less then a decade, incomes have remained flat at the same time as we have moved more to the flat taxation model… its not ok to assume lower middle class home owners can simply absorb more by cutting the cable bill… we should demand more accountability.

So here is what I found out:
Assessment to population ratio, City, and population (,000’s) in order from highest to lowest (ability to pay).

$1,086,882-Whistler-9
$316,882-Vancouver-580
$264,635-Sechelt-8
$261,993-North Vancouver-45
$225,430-Victoria-78
$219,442-Kelowna-108
$218,317-Saanich-110
$189,359-Vernon-36
$176,009-Penticton-32
$166,273-Nelson-10
$162,923-Comox-12
$161,292-Nanaimo-79
$153,430-Salmon Arm-17
$151,660-Kamloops-80
$141,901-Chilliwack-72
$139,357-Abbotsford-125
$138,526-Fort St John-17
$133,154-Cranbrook-18
$130,684-Campbell River-30
$123,889-Powell River-13
$100,515-PRINCE GEORGE-71
$98,932-Quesnel-10
$91,988-Vanderhoof-5
$84,750-Terrace-11
$78,026-Fort St James-1.3
$76,181-Prince Rupert-13

So clearly when we measure wealth in property, the measure used for municipal taxation purposes… clearly PG is not the wealthiest city in BC, an argument made to justify high taxes in PG. I haven’t even included cities like Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby… it would just push PG further down to the bottom of measured wealth in BC.

Furthermore PG has the highest delinquent taxes in the province and is the only city other than Vancouver ($1.13 Billion) to carry more than a $100,000,000 in debt.

So we do know for a fact that PG is near the bottom of measured wealth as it pertains to taxation.

The next question using our new metrics is what is the actual taxation to assessed value ratio? This clearly tells the tale of what the moving vans out of PG have known for years.

Here is what I have found using the metrics from above:
Total Municipal Taxes Imposed 2011 divided by the (Assessment to population ratio), City… in order from lowest to highest.

$33-Fort St James
$65-Whistler
$69-Sechelt
$73-Vanderhoof
$103-Comox
$124-Nelson
$171-Powell River
$181-Salmon Arm
$218-Terrace
$226-Quesnel
$252-Cranbrook
$275-Penticton
$287-Fort St John
$294 Prince Rupert
$319-Vernon
$378-Campbell River
$706-Chilliwack
$759-Saanich
$859-Victoria
$855-North Van
$883-Nanaimo
$903-Kamloops
$904-Kelowna
$1239-PRINCE GEORGE
$1358-Abbotsford
$3721-Vancouver

So here PG is near the bottom of actual measured wealth in property per capita, but third from the top in relative apples to apples per capita taxation. At least $300 more than our peer groups.

When it comes to taxation for capital invested in property clearly places like Vanderhoof, Sechelt, Comox, Powell River, and even Quesnel are bargains compared to investing in PG.

Invest in PG and pay the third highest tax on capital invested, and on top of that the second highest long term debt risk to future interest rate shock. Sounds like a bad investment to me.

Is it any wonder PG has been stagnant for the last couple of decades… and people like Sine Nomine want us to look at our cable bills to justify property taxes in PG? If it were not for the wages paid in the forest industry in PG, and government jobs, the town would be bankrupt and abandoned like Detroit a long time ago.