By Colleen Dane
Nothing reveals a councillor’s true colours like the creation of the city’s budget plans.
This year’s budget approval process has run the gamut from cutting to hiking taxes, and has proven to many the real politics of city hall.
Over the past month, local businesses were faced with the difficult choice of a rock or a hard place.
Under the draft budget’s recommendations, businesses would have been forced to pay for services, such as garbage disposal, that were previously provided by the city.
With the proposed tax increase, though, many vulnerable businesses will have to pay much higher tax rates, creating another challenge for them to even stay open.
For Somerset Ward councillor Diane Holmes, the decision seems to have been an easy one: She would rather increase taxes than implement the service cuts proposed last month.
But her decision turns the businesses of Centretown into second-class citizens.
A tax increase will hurt Centretown’s mom and pop businesses especially hard after the provincial government’s announcement last week which protects residential taxes, leaving the burden for local company owners.
The few councillors who worked to protect businesses from a 10 per cent tax hike, were dubbed the “the zeroes” by some in City Hall who favoured an increase.
Holmes, though, was not among the zeroes.
She drove forward on her socially popular and media-friendly campaign against the proposed cuts rather than looking at how her chosen solution would affect the neighbourhood that voted her in.
But Holmes’ jump on the anti-business bandwagon has left many in her constituency disillusioned with the city’s financial policies.
Gerry LePage, executive director of the Bank Street Promenade Business Improvement Association, even called the public consultations surrounding the draft budget “a farce.”
If Holmes had listened to what business owners were saying, she would have heard business owners crying for tax freezes, warning her about the repercussions of a further tax increase.
It is understandable that Holmes was personally horrified by the predicted results of the cuts, as many in the city and on council were. The threatened services are important to the city as a whole.
Her stance should have been one of moderation and compromise.
Holmes should have argued this massive budget shortfall could not be corrected in just one year without hurting either the residents or businesspeople of the community.
She should have been advocating a mix of non-drastic service cuts and tax increases over the span of a few years.
If anyone should have been urging graduated changes in order to maintain a community’s balance, it should have been Holmes.
Centretown is an interesting cross-section of interests and needs. Its residents need their services and its businesses need to continue operating.
As the councillor of this unique ward, Holmes should have developed a unique solution.
It should have been a solution which was best for the neighbourhood as a whole — even if it wasn’t as easy to explain to the press.