The Property Taxpayers Alliance (PTA) is an association of residential property taxpayers from municipalities and townships across Ontario.
We are a not-for-profit corporation formed to advocate for the efficient and effective use of your hard-earned property tax dollars.
Ontario’s homeowners have been watching their property taxes rise at multiples of inflation year-after-year, eroding away disposable incomes. This is simply not sustainable. Property tax affordability is becoming a major issue in Ontario. Lower income households are struggling and tax arrears are rising. Cities must start establishing yearly budgets that on average do not increase faster than the incomes of those who pay these taxes.
The cost of infrastructure for new housing developments is increasingly being dumped on the backs of existing property taxpayers. This is absolutely wrong. Existing property taxpayers have already paid for the infrastructure servicing their properties, and they continue to pay for its maintenance in their taxes. They should not be required to also pay for the infrastructure needed for new housing developments. Growth MUST pay for Growth. If it can’t, Cities are trying to grow faster than we can afford. Period!
In Tiny Ontario, the Mayor and Council went ahead with a new $50 million dollar administration building when they could have simply modified/expanded the existing one at dramatically lower cost. Additionally, a new site was selected which required the tearing down of acres of existing forested area when the old site location was already available. The majority of Tiny property taxpayers were against building the new administration offices, but council still proceeded. This will add several percentage points to property taxes for a many years to come just to pay the interest and principal on the debentures required to fund the project. Absolutely shameful.
Niagara Region council is comprised of a chair, 12 mayors from the constituent municipalities, and 18 regional councillors. Including the individual municipalities and townships that make up the Niagara Region, there are 126 councillors and mayors, 13 different CAO’s making well over $150,000 annually, and 11 separate fire services. The duplication and lack of efficiency is staggering. Consider that Hamilton, with a population comparable to that of the Niagara Region, has just 15 councillors and one CAO.
There’s a desperate need for greater efficiency and effectiveness in the operations of Ontario’s municipalities and townships. Budgets are ballooning with unrealistic salary, wage, and benefit increases, excessive hiring, and the addition of new discretionary spending programs that property taxpayers never asked for.
Municipal councillors and city senior bureaucrats are well aware of the growing property tax affordability problem in Ontario, but they fail to do anything about it. They just kick the can down the road hoping the next administration will deal with it.
Help us bring about change. If your municipality or township has organized a group to fight ever-rising property taxes, or if you are an individual who is just fed up, lets work together. Email us at info@propertytaxpayer.ca or call (519)-716-1645 to join the movement. Or sign up for our newsletter today.