We can complain about lack of services, but not so much in the winter

Jeff Green | Jan 15, 2020

Like most of you, my wife and I pay more in municipal taxes for our home than we would like. The municipal tax system is based on property values, and as property values increase so does the amount we pay. It is like a pre-tax on the eventual sale of our homes, be that day five years, ten years, or fifty years down the road. In some rural jurisdictions, like ours, the tax rate is double that of the City of Toronto.

Because their homes are valued at 4 or 5 times the value of our homes, most Toronto ratepayers pay much more than we do. But at the end of the day they have that stronger asset, which will make them millionaires some time in the future and gives them equity right now.

Also in Toronto, a huge range of services are provided by the city, including sewers, swimming pools, parks, comprehensive social services, waste pickup, public transportation, even thousands of multi-coloured stop-lights.

It is a classic economy of scale issue. And road maintenance is as graphic an illustration of that as anything else. There are so many more ratepayers to tap into, in order to maintain a single kilometre of road in Toronto, as compared to Frontenac County.

In the wintertime, however, this population density can be a problem, as anyone who travels to a residential neighbourhood in a big city, a week after a snow storm, can tell you. Around here, within a matter of hours, crews have knocked the snow to the side and covered the road with a layer of sand and salt, but in the city, parked cars are in the way, and there is no where to push the snow. If there are consecutive weather events, it can be weeks until everything settles down, and most of the work ends up being done by the cars themselves, packing snow down into brown clumps of urban dirt.

Even with the rural advantage as far as snow and ice removal are concerned, I have to say that the service from road crews in Frontenac County, in particular in Central Frontenac, which I see the most because it is where I live, have been impressive in recent years, and this year even more so.

The legal requirement on many of our roads is for them to be cleared if there is an accumulation of more than 15 centimetres of snow on the ground, but our municipalities know that mobility is essential for most of us, and crews are out whenever the roads can be improved by plowing, sanding, or both. On statutory holidays and weekends over Christmas and New Years, crews were working day and night to deal with changes in road conditions because of the “wintry” mix we have been facing.

And this weekend, in spite of all the weather, the roads remained passable, even if it was not advisable to use them. If someone really had to get out, or emergency personnel had to get in, just about all township roads, even the back roads, were passable throughout the weekend, as long as the drivers took proper precautions and were driving suitable vehicles.

And over the years, the service has, if anything, become more reliable.

I’ll try to remember that when the first 2020 tax bill arrives later this month.