City Shortchanged On PILTs? Appeal: QUOTABLE
“What Ottawa gets from payment in lieu of taxes is no small change, and its financial problem is not because the feds are shortchanging the city. The feds have long had the power to decide the value of their properties and pay PILTs accordingly. If the city feels it has been shortchanged, it should seek redress from a panel that exists for that purpose. If it hasn’t done so, that says a lot. The reality of the city’s financial crisis is largely because it has made bad choices on how it spends money, and has poorly managed some of the big projects, including LRT, that have ended up costing more money.”
Ottawa Citizen columnist Mohammed Adam on Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s fairness campaign
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Adam has cut to the chase with this paragraph alone. Adam knows his stuff. He was the Ottawa City Hall reporter just before I got there.
Sutcliffe is show-boating.
Nice to get a break in the Citizen from Randall Denley’s bafflegab.
You can read Adam’s column by clicking here.
Ken Gray
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The other side of PILT is Beds and Heads. This is how the Province pays taxes for institutions such as hospitals, universities, jails, etc. The formula used is $75 per bed or head. This $75 amount has not gone up since 1987. Even if you thought this was a great way to calculate “taxes” for these types of institutions, can I have may taxes revert back to what I paid in 1987. For example, the Jules Leger Institution in Westboro Beach area, which is a provincial school for disabled children (outside of the normal school board) sits on probably about 10 acres of land and has about 50 students. It would pay about $3750 in “tax”. I suspect you would be hard pressed to find any detached or semi-detached house in Westboro beach that pays only $3750 in municipal taxes.