Mayor calls for provincial tax reform
By Kyra Hoggan
Castlegar Mayor Lawrence Chernoff is publicly calling for province-wide tax reform in response to a range of issues facing B.C. municipalities, including Castlegar.
Chernoff said the systems by which taxes are collected and distributed were created based on obsolete criteria – what made sense decades, or even centuries, ago does not serve the modern province’s needs.
Addressing problems in the New Millennium, he said, requires new taxation models created during the New Millennium.
“Population centres have shifted, demographic realities are different , the economic and educational arenas have evolved dramatically … think back to even just 50 years ago. It’s an entirely different world,” he said. “So why are we relying on taxation models that were developed that long ago or even longer? It’s time we looked for answers that will work for us today and tomorrow, instead of hanging on to yesterday.”
He said clear illustrations of the dischord include situations like the one with Celgar, in which major industry ratepayers are declining to pay their tax bills and filing lawsuits with the B.C. Supreme Court instead.
“Then there’s the situation with the board of education (currently trying to problem-solve in the face of an anticipated $4-million budget cut),” he said. “The question here is, How do you maintain levels of service? We need to find another solution, a balance that allows us to keep service levels up without overtaxing any single group or tax class.”
Chernoff penned a column to that effect that ran in the Vancouver Sun on Jan.19.
He says there has not yet been a response from the provincial government.
