Quote:
Originally Posted by Kavvy
I am confused. Our Mayor wants the city charter to have the ability to create a city sales tax, does he not?
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A City Charter is most helpful because it clearly states what are municipal vs provincial responsibilities. For example, affordable housing or issues of poverty are traditionally considered provincial responsibilities, yet cities have been de facto governments responsible for those issues.
How to pay for those services is definitely part of the conversation. But, as mentioned, an ideal situation would be the Calgarians get more of a refund on the billions of taxes we send to the provincial government each year. Yeah, the mayor hates property tax... it is regressive and doesn't actually consider a person's ability to pay said tax. Being able to replace that with ANYTHING would be great. Right now, that option doesn't even exist. A City Charter would actually mean citizens can talk about how they want to do that. A City Charter won't actually provide a new form of taxation for cities... at best, it would open the door to citizens to have that conversation in more than just a theoretical way. This is the latest on the Charter conversation... likely more to come with the new government.
http://calgarymayor.ca/stories/premi...t-for-charters