It seems that three of our four mayoral candidates are bucking the provincial trend when it comes to a business tax vote.
Only Eugene Fetterly supports a return to business owners having a vote in municipal elections. He in step with 71 per cent of mayoral candidates across the province who were polled by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Candidates Dan Rogers, Don Zurowski, and Dane Greenwell said they did not support a return to the practice of allowing business owners to vote, eliminated in 1993. Zurowski qualified his vote saying he cannot support the practice of a ‘weighted’ vote, which would allow an individual to vote more than once (as a property owner and as a business owner).
This has always been a sore point for business owners who, sometimes, live outside the city, pay substantial taxes, but don’t get to vote for the council who spends those taxes. However, Zurowski make a good point in that the old system resulted in people having more than one vote, and that’s not fair. Extrapolating on the reasoning that businesses owners should vote because they own businesses in town, the case is then easily made that renters shouldn’t because they don’t own property in town. Should elections be limited to people who live in the city or expanded to those who own property?
On the question: Do you support narrowing the business property tax gap in your municipality? Greenwell said yes, Fetterly and Zurowski said no, and Rogers didn’t give an answer, but commented that the Prince George business ratio among lowest in B.C. Zurowski commented that he doesn’t support narrowing the gap because council has already taken a business-friendly and responsible approach to taxation.
Provincially, 86 per cent of mayoral candidates voted yes on the question.
This is another issue that is a sore point for business owners. Historically, in every community, businesses pay a higher tax rate than homeowners. For example, a business in Prince George assessed at $200,000 pays $3,000 in taxes while a homeowner with house assessed at $200,000 pays $1,314. Is that fair? The rationale is that business areas require more services … the roads are ploughed first and more often, there are more policing costs, roads need more maintenance, etc. The question is whether the ratio is fair. Should homeowners be shouldering a larger portion of the tax burden? They call it narrowing the gap. What that means is homeowners shouldering more of the tax burden. That is the only way to ‘narrow the gap.’
On the motherhood question: Do you support holding municipal operational spending increases to a level closer to population and inflation growth? Not surprisingly, all four said yes. Who wouldn’t? Some apparently, as only 93 per cent voted yes.
There were some differing votes on the question, do you support a system of measuring regulatory burden so that your municipality can start to take steps to reduce this burden? Rogers and Zurowski said yes, Fetterly said no and Greenwell didn’t respond.
Rogers, Zurowski, and Fetterly all agreed with a regular value for money audit of municipal public expenditures by an independent auditor general. Rogers said he supports independent audits, but added the challenge is who pays for it.