Editorial — Caledon is not Toronto

January 29, 2015 · 0 Comments

The nice things about budget deliberations, in which Caledon officials are currently engaged, is they get people thinking; at least those people who are actually interested in their community.
They ask questions, and those answers often provide insight. Such insights are seldom new, but they get us thinking in slightly different terms.
Caledon is currently looking at a tax increase this year of 4.72 per cent. It again must be stressed that nothing has been finalized yet. The Town is still gathering input, as was the case last week with the public session that was held at Town Hall. And it was also pointed out that figure refers only to the portion of the property tax bill that the Town keeps. Last year, it amounted to about 36 per cent of the total. The Town is also required to collect the taxes for Peel Region, as well as the local school boards.
According to the current projections, and we again stress they are just projections, the total, combined tax hike faced by Caledon voters is going to be on the order of just two per cent.
We bring that up here because there have been questions raised about the proposed tax increase being discussed in the City of Toronto. The point was raised a couple of times at last week’s session that Mayor (and former local MPP) John Tory is looking a tax increase about two percentage points lower than Caledon’s.
What was pointed out to these people is there’s really no comparison between Caledon and Toronto. Toronto is a single-tier municipality, while Caledon occupies the lower of two levels with Peel above. The comparison is only valid if the Regional figures are factored in.
We would all like to see the lowest tax increase possible for Caledon, and that’s what municipal officials are, we hope, aiming for.
But as things stand now, things don’t look that bad, at least compared to Toronto.