By Joan Albright

This the second part of a response to J.R. Hunt's letter in the Owen Sound Sun Times, September 24, 2014

Always ready with its magic, the Magician allowed new creative ways for the Creatures to fund their costs, one of which is the popular "user fee." If you use it, then you will pay for it - over and above what you were already paying for it in your property taxes. It's magical.

Some Creatures had jumped into 'businesses' such as public transit which should be self-funding shouldn't it? Some had trailer parks, golf courses, more recreation facilities which should be self-funding, shouldn't they?

Municipal corporations don't make good business operators because the board of directors - the council - is elected and therefore subject to whim and maybe even a little of its own magic.

As a result of all the magic, Chatsworth Township was one of those Creatures adversely affected by the restructuring and amalgamation by the Magician. Chatsworth only receives 25 per cent of the farmland taxation it used to levy. From 2002 to 2013 that is a total loss of $4,510,883 of tax revenue. Chatsworth had very limited commercial and industrial assessment which further limited its revenue-raising ability.

Most amalgamated municipalities have at least one former town and some have more than one with thriving commercial districts and local industries which greatly increases their revenue generation powers.

The result is that costs of all those service levels we have demanded now fall, for the most part, directly onto us. We are now in the position of making up the 75 per cent property tax shortfall created by the former Farm Tax Rebate Program - farmers (and others) are now paying for their own rebate plan! More magic!

Chatsworth Township was created in 2000 by the amalgamation of the former Village of Chatsworth and the Townships of Holland and Sullivan.

If you care to look up the Creatures' annual financial information returns on the Magician's website, you can plainly see that Chatsworth operated in an annual deficit position until the Magician restored some level of unconditional funding. You can also see that, until Chatsworth and its neighbour Georgian Bluffs jointly ventured into the bio-digester initiative, Chatsworth had no long term debt other than tile drainage loans which are repaid by the benefitting landowners. That was quite remarkable considering that other Creatures with more than twice the taxable assessment as Chatsworth were carrying debt as early as 2007.

You can go back further if you like but the Magician only allows you to see the reports from 2002 forward. It would serve no purpose to look back prior to amalgamation to see what the level of funding was. Black magic.

To be continued in Part Three