02-07-2018, 02:40 PM
(02-07-2018, 12:51 PM)MidTowner Wrote: Ijmorlan means that, for anyone whose time is worth anything in financial terms, the burden being imposed currently is definitely greater than $26/year. Some people truly might rate their time as worthless and give it away for free, some people enjoy shoveling snow and would conceivably do it for fun anyway, but for “typical” property owners with “busy lives” (almost everyone seems to think their life is busy), they’re using $26 worth of labour clearing the city-owned sidewalk after the first snowfall or two.
Thanks, that’s essentially what I’m saying. Another way of thinking about it: imagine the city makes city-provided sidewalk clearing an optional service. Every property owner either pays $30 and gets their sidewalk cleared, or they don’t pay, in which case a bylaw officer comes out 24 hours after every snowfall and tickets them if their walk isn’t clear.
By definition, anybody who opted in would consider the cost to themselves of doing their own shovelling to be more than $30 a year; and anybody who opted out would consider the cost to themselves of doing their own shovelling to be less than $30 a year. This is called a “revealed preference”.
How many people would opt out? I mean, for real?
Funny thing, is I actually think that if people raise a stink about the supposed tax increase then making it opt-out might actually be a reasonable approach: anybody who wanted to could opt out of the tax increase, and would instead getting the bylaw officers checking up on them after every storm. I predict the out-out rate would be about 0.1% the first year and indistinguishable from 0 the second year. This isn’t like other services where it’s really not feasible to prevent non-payers from using the service (e.g., parks; we simply have to decide, at Council, how much to spend).