Walking in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

Not anything useful. City responsibility is a tax decrease, not increase, so it’s not appropriate to frame it as an increase.

Except for those who currently shirk their responsibility.

That is why I was musing about reporting everybody. But of course that only works if most reports turn into enforcement actions.

I don't think I follow.

Your obligation to the City as a property owner consists of the requirement to pay taxes, and the requirement to clear snow from the sidewalk (and some other stuff but let’s leave that aside as we’re not discussing changing it). The requirement to clear snow has a higher value (how much you would have to pay somebody to do it, or how much you would demand to do it for somebody else) than the amount of tax it would take to cover an equivalent service. Therefore, replacing the snow-clearing requirement with a slight increase in the tax requirement is a decrease in the total obligation.

The only possible counterargument is that in fact the value of the requirement to clear snow is lower than the tax increase. But the proposed tax increase is so small that this is really unbelievable, unless it is assumed that the property owner simply shirks the requirement but couldn’t shirk the tax increase. One could also argue that a property owner counts snow clearing as part of their exercise program or some such but at a certain point we’re getting into crazy town and I just can’t take it seriously.

This isn’t like other cases where the choice is whether or not to raise taxes to pay for a new or improved program. Nobody is proposing that sidewalks not be cleared as a matter of policy; the only question is whether to do it efficiently at a low cost or inefficiently at a high cost. I can’t help but point out that in fact those in favour of the status quo actually are proposing that sidewalks not be cleared (reliably) as a matter of practical reality. That’s why I found one politician’s comments that they didn’t want to “raise taxes” so grating. As if a low tax rate in and of itself matters even one bit. What are the taxes buying? That’s what determines whether the levels are appropriate, not the taxation levels themselves. It’s like looking at a price tag in a store and complaining it’s high without even looking at the item for which it is the price tag.