[Slava]

Originally Posted by SebC

With respect to point a) knowing about a situation doesn't mean we shouldn't try to change it. If the advantages of inner city living outweight the disadvantage, choosing to live there and wanting to not have to subsidize the 'burbs are both rational.

With respect to point b) it's not strictly a tax structure issue. It's a matter of subsidizing the suburban lifestyle (and not a matter of rich subsidizing poor either) at the expense of the inner city. If the tax structure were to stay the same but the spending structure shifted, that could eliminated the subsidy. Or the spending structure could stay the same and the revenue model could change, and that would also eliminate the subsidy. Both sides of the equation come into play.

As for special treatment, the special treatment that you receive is that you don't pay a market rate for the services you receive. This market failure is a net drain on the city as a whole, through deadweight loss. Roads, transit and fire stations may be basic services for a city to provide, but having a low density community is a luxury that should be paid for by those who choose it.

I'm sure to make friends with this comment, but hopefully its taken in the right way. The reality of a lot of inner city communities is that they're full of rental properties and people complaining about this issue who don't pay their own way anyway. Sure, the owner of that property pays property taxes, but in a lot of cases its not the same person at all. So who's paying the full market rate here?

To the same point, of course no one bears the full brunt of the costs for their public services. That is how public services work. You have no kids, but you still pay taxes and support education. I might rarely need medical attention, yet I still pay for that system. You can't pick and choose what you're supporting. We're not running a cafeteria here; you pay into the system and we elect people to distribute the resources accordingly.

Originally Posted by Table 5

Ok, well I guess since this was directed my way...



I have no issues with my tax bill numbers wise. Frankly, I think Calgary property taxes are pretty low compared to a lot of places (Im coming from a state where my property taxes would probably be at least 5x the amount I'm paying. And I know that my taxes are higher because I live in a more central location that is perceived as more desirable. I'm A-ok with that.

What I do have a problem with is subsidizing new communities and continuing the trend of stretching out city resources without them paying the true cost. Communities where the city is spending a ton of money building new roads, infrastructure, and other amenities, but where the residents have to pay a fraction of the taxes compared to the rest of us. And with every new community, the roads that need to be maintained are stretched out, the pipes are stretched out, we need more cops and firemen…..it's an endless cycle of inefficiency compared to how many people use them. Somebody has to pay for all this….yet, it never really seems to truly be the residents of these communities.

Strictly speaking, at the end of the day, spending $1 in the inner city is more efficient than spending $1 in a suburb. If you build, say a small park in my neighborhood, it has the potential to be used by hundreds of thousands of people (including those from the suburbs). If you build a park in Silverado, it has a catch area of a few thousand at best. Yet, chances are the cost to build it will be fairly similar. And it's not like any other suburbanite will use your facilities either. Because someone in Tuscany will never go to Silverado either. So now we have to build all this stuff for every community that only certain people use, but everyone has to pay for.

Now I'm not saying that everything should be built in the inner city, but I think there needs to be a better balance, and a city should be spending it as efficiently as possible. Because even if our tax bills were exactly equal, it doesn't really represent the best interests of the city when so much of it has to go maintain the endless miles of suburbia.

And yes, you are right, I CHOSE to live in the inner city knowing that I have to pay higher taxes….but maybe you need to understand that you also CHOSE to live in Silverado (or wherever), so you should be ok with living with longer transportation times, less amenities, and being #35 on the priority list because there aren't enough of you. Or pay the price tax wise…up to you.


Our transit needs are hugely different. You need heavy-rail and/or highway infrastructure just to get to work or go to to a mall. In an ideal (ie, not necessarily Calgary) inner-city situation, all I need is a bike-lane or a street-car/subway, or often times…a basis sidewalk. And even if I need a subway, I'm sharing it with hundreds of thousands of people….possibly even you. You're interchange in the middle of nowhere will never be used by anyone outside of a small section of the city.




Of course there are, I don't think I've ever said to the contrary. It's not good versus evil for me……hell, I'd love a yard and a garage and am mucho jealous if you have those. But I do have pretty strong convictions about the suburban lifestyle is a lot less sustainable for a city economically and environmentally. I'm more efficient, use less infrastructure dollars per capita, and share my amenities with more people…….yet I pay higher taxes. Why exactly?

Again, my intention wasn't to single you out Table, so apologies in advance if you took it that way. I figure that you can handle it though, so I don't feel that bad about it!

My point here again is that as taxpaying citizens we fund all kinds of things that we might prefer not to. Its great that you might prefer to fund more bike lanes to go from Mt. Royal and Elbow Park downtown as opposed to an overpass in my neck of the woods. Maybe you prefer to add transit routes and services in case that stroll to work is too cold whereas I might want to build another library branch here; those are decisions we elect people to make.

I am secretly thrilled that you chose the park example. I happen to sit on the board for a park in our community that gets an enormous amount of use. Its nowhere near downtown and entirely public. I couldn't give you a headcount sort of figure, but I know that we're drawing people from all over SW Calgary and getting a minute amount of funding from the city. In fact, we're getting the vast amount of our funding from the community residents. Frankly, the funding we receive from the city is an absolute pittance compared to what we spend; I have a hard time thinking those handfuls of dollars could be better spent in the inner city somewhere.

To your point about you paying higher taxes, it all comes back to the market value system of collections and the fact that people are in favour of user pay when its something they don't plan on using. Its funny, but people seem to be against things like toll roads when they're going to drive them on a regular basis.