Senior governments overtax and give cheques, Maroosis says

Senior level politicians overtax their constituents and then keep them happy by handing out cheques, Coun. George Maroosis says.

Maroosis made his comments at Monday night’s council meeting after the $91 million 2005 municipal budget was passed.

Bottom of the food chain
The councilors who spoke before Maroosis praised the job budget chief Peter Chirico and city staff had done in bringing the tax increase down to 3.94 per cent from its original nine per cent-plus projection.

Maroosis echoed that sentiment but then went off on a different tack.

He started by saying municipalities are on the “bottom of the food chain” when it comes to government.

“And quite frankly we look forward to federal and provincial budgets because we’re always looking at them and we’re saying ‘is there going to be a tax cut or who’s going to get something.” Maroosis said.

“We tend to have two levels of government that tax people probably above and beyond the call of duty and then in fact hand their money back to them in order to keep them happy.”

Higher bill
Local governments, though, don’t have that ability.

“Wouldn’t be nice if Peter could stand up and make announcements and say ‘this year we’re going to give ‘X’ number of dollars extra over to this group over to assist our seniors and children and to solve this problem, and by the way we have this surplus of billions,’ which is money that they tax more than they needed, ‘and we’re going to have a tax cut for all of you,’” Maroosis said.

The city, he added, isn’t in the position to do that.

“We are probably the people who are least appreciated by the taxpayer because we tend to send out a higher bill and they don’t like us very much for that.”

Overtaxing
Past city councils have been criticized, Maroosis said, “because we didn’t increase taxes when we should have or possibly we should have increased them a little more because things in the community became dilapidated.”

Municipal budgets are like household budgets, Maroosis said, and there are only two ways to deal with rising expenses: increasing revenues or decreasing expenditures.

“We just don’t have the luxury that those other guys who tend to get away with overtaxing and then handing money out and being popular,” Maroosis said.

“And if I think of a way to change this then I would share it everybody and then Peter could come in with a new pair of shoes and then hand out some gifts somewhere and then some wise person would figure out that probably we overtaxed them. But they haven’t figured it out at other levels.

Tolerate it
Mayor Peter Fedeli said Maroosis had articulated what he’s been thinking Fridays when the local MP and MPP normally hand out cheques.

“I wouldn’t it be nice to hand out $10,000 or $20,000 cheques every Friday, then I realize that’s our money,” Fedeli said.

“I’m grateful and not taking anything away from them, and as long as they’re getting away with it here in North Bay bringing in cheques, then we’ll tolerate it.”