One of the biggest criticisms that many people have about their politicians is that they don't work hard enough. This may be true in some cases, but at City Hall they certainly dispelled some of those claims. Unfortunately the only thing they were working hard at is taking more money out of your pockets. Elected officials had a busy day considering raising parking fines and releasing a bogus property tax study.

A document prepared by the City of Winnipeg entitled "Cities Are Not Created Equal" simply proved what the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been saying for a long time, Winnipeg has some of the highest property taxes in Canada. The City's intent to release this very fancy document was to show that for every dollar of property taxes paid by homeowners, businesses pay $1.40. They went on to compare this figure to Calgary where they claim that for every loonie homeowners pay in property taxes in that city, business are paying $3.00.

What makes this release even more laughable is the spin coming out of City Hall: "The research helps debunk the myth that property taxes in Winnipeg are higher than elsewhere." It is interesting that they chose to use this comment since page 4 of their document shows a chart where Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Regina all have lower municipal property taxes on a 1200 square foot house than Winnipeg.

Some other interesting tidbits to note were Mayor Murray's comments about the released information. He stated that "other cities have money flowing in from all kinds of other revenue pipelines. Those include franchise fees, charges on utility companies, user fees. Winnipeg doesn't. Changing any of these things requires support from the province. And fortunately we have an excellent relationship with the province and they are looking at another round of reviews of the City of Winnipeg Act. That allows us to talk about building some other revenue pipelines."

Interpretation: the City is going to ask the Province for power to levy user fees. This is something that the CTF would support, as long as there was a comprehensive proposal put forward to lower property taxes. Having said that, the reality that we face is that Winnipeg disproportionately relies on property taxes and because of spendthrift civic polices, too many expenditures are going to pay for debt financing rather than services.

The other issue on Council's agenda was to raise parking fines. The City's Executive Policy Committee is going to decide whether or not to boost fines to "deter violations." The proposal is to alter the current 3-tier system to a 2-tier system where fines would be $25 in the first 2 weeks, then jump to $50 thereafter. It has been estimated that the increased fines will rake in an additional $1 million into City coffers.

Another $1 million Does the mayor have one more toilet that he wants to build on a bridge All this amounts to is yet another way of government taking our hard-earned money to satisfy their insatiable appetite to spend.