Taxation and the middle class

[danbrotherston]

For example, look at Kitchener's infrastructure situation. Like many places we have a lot of stuff that should have been replaced long ago, often decades ago, but has been kicked own the road again and again due to the desire to "keep taxes low". Then in the early 2000s Kitchener set up the Advanced Infrastructure Replacement Program and started it in 2003. It was a twenty year plan to do an extra small amount of work over what was normally done each year in order to catch up, but now, in 2020, we are not 17/20ths through the stuff that needed to be done, again because things were once again put off in order to not raise property taxes, the cost of water services, and so on.

If they want to save money on road maintenance, they should do it at construction time: build it at 2 lanes instead of 4, or just don’t build it. Be honest about how much stuff costs. What if we had a policy that we don’t build any new roads or road widenings when there is more than a 5 year backlog on infrastructure renewal?

Edit: I just realized what this would turn into: road widenings would be essential, but no bicycle infrastructure construction would happen while we were backlogged, which would be all of the time.

This is another thing that is never considered for any project. Once a road is 4 lanes, it takes half a century to reconsider it being 4 lanes, that's half a century of maintenance on a road that was wastefully wide. I've said it before, if real fiscal conservatives existed, they'd have a meltdown about it...well...like I do.  But you're right, these costs should be considered as part of the original project, and the necessary tax increases built in, rather than an after the fact breakdown.