We hope the mayor is right; Tax hike will drop

These are still early days, in terms of municipal budgets.

Town of Caledon staff have presented a draft budget to council for its consideration, but the really important fact, at this stage at least, is councillors have had very limited opportunity to work on it.

The current draft, which went before council late last month, calls for a tax increase of 7.6 per cent. Mayor Marolyn Morrison said that's too high, and it will have to come down. How right we hope she is!

We would submit that Town staff has simply presented a document they know will face serious adjustments. But they had an obligation to give the politicians something to chew on. That means there are no villains in this story, at least not yet. The municipal staff has simply established a starting point for future deliberations. And there will be plenty of discussion before the budget is finally passed.

All of us have come to accept that death and taxes are among the certainties of life, and as we accept taxes, we also have to accept periodic and regular increases. Granted, that's not a lot of fun, but it is reality. As well, most of us hope the tax hikes will be as low and reasonable as possible.

Although inflation is not at the run-away levels we encountered some 30 years ago, the cost of things continues to rise, and that includes the services provided by government. Some people chose to ignore that reality for a couple of years in the early '90s. In some cases, the taxation levels had admittedly soared out of control. In other cases, activist groups latched on to the taxation issue, not because they cared whether taxes went up, down or sideways, but because it was an easy way to try and manipulate the electorate. The results might have included some tax modification for a couple of years, but communities throughout were obliged to neglect the upkeep of facilities and infrastructure, simply because a misguided electorate wouldn't allow them the necessary funds.

That is a trap we doubt communities will fall into again. Indeed, we're hearing too much these days, from places all over the country, about what is being referred to as "infrastructure deficit."

No, there is no way government can let that happen. There's too much to be done.

We would submit that the 7.6 per cent increase is too high at this point, granting that we are still in the early stages of this process.

Alas, we cannot tell you at this time what an acceptable increase would be. We can only trust in the best efforts of councillors and Town staff to do right by the taxpayers.

But we have to remind you all of certain realities. We all have expectations of our municipal government, and those expectations always come at a cost. And if you don't want to pay the price, you had better be prepared to accept the consequences.