The 25-75 tax split: 100 per cent broken promises

Last week’s anonymous rant focused on the idea that farmers who pay 25 per cent of the property taxes on farmland are paying enough, already.  The ranter was sick and tired of hearing municipal councillors talk about lost revenues due to the lower rate of taxes being paid by farmers. What services is a municipality providing to rural farmland, one could ask. Farmers, do, however, pay the full 100 per cent rate on the residential portion of their properties.
Sometimes, the people on two different sides of an issue are right – meaning, in other words, that they are on the same side of the issue, when all is said and done.
In this case, much has been said by the province of Ontario; little has been done.
Farmers in Ontario used to pay the full rate of taxation to municipalities; farmers then were paid a 75 per cent tax rebate on their farm property and farm buildings. In 1998, in what was termed “streamlining”, municipalities began collecting only 25 per cent of their tax; municipalities were then obliged to apply to the province for the remaining 75 per cent.
Municipalities have not, in so many words “lost revenue”. In order to meet their commitments, municipalities determine the amount of funds necessary to operate the municipality, in much the same way as the counties’ level of government makes the same determination. Our municipal governments then set about determining a mill rate which will effectively collect adequate property taxes to remit a share to the counties’ government and the Ontario Ministry of Education, while keeping its own share for municipal purposes.
The problem is not that farmers are paying only 25 per cent of their taxes; the problem is that the province has not kept its promise to reimburse municipalities the 75 per cent share of the farm tax rebate.
Since 1998, Prescott-Russell’s shortfall has been tallied at $4.4 million. That means $4.4 million has been redistributed among all taxpayers in Prescott-Russell. In Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, the figure is estimated to be about $7.5 million.
A similar scenario is playing out in other rural Ontario municipalities. And remember that rural municipalities do not have the higher-volume industrial and commercial tax bases of larger urban municipalities. In addition, rural municipalities do not have the urban residential density to boost tax revenues.
You figure it out. Some mayors already have. The Nation Mayor Denis Pommainville said that the shortfall in his municipality, which is about 42 to 45 per cent agricultural, was $900,000 for this year alone.
United Counties chief administrative officer Stéphane Parisien pegged it as a $1.9-million tax shift –  most of which is falling onto residential properties.
While we are all busy pointing fingers, the truth is that we in the rural areas are left footing higher tax bills because of unkept promises.
This newspaper, for one, does not want to hear any more hyperbole or see any more press releases about rural sustainability projects until the farm property taxation imbalance has been addressed and if and when the province does pay up (with interest now that funds are overdue) we can then inquire about the integrity of a government which apparently can choose to ignore its own promises.
It is a sad reflection that such disrespectful governing is no longer unusual enough to make the headlines.
L.S.