Sudbury city council has 'difficult' conversation about taxes and firefighting

Greater Sudbury city council waded into a touchy topic Tuesday night that has largely been avoided since amalgamation 20 years ago.

Outlying parts of the city with infrequent transit service and covered byvolunteer firefighters pay less property tax under a system known as "area rating."

But for several years now, full-time firefighters have also been responding to calls in outlying towns such as Chelmsford and Coniston, even though that service is covered almost entirely by taxpayers in Sudbury proper.

An arbitration ruling last year has now forced the city to hire some full-timers for the fire hall in Val Therese, at an estimated annual cost of $1 million.

On Tuesday, Sudbury city council debated several different options for how to divvy up the bill.

In the end, by a vote of 9-3, they decided to phase in the increase, with the annual property tax bill for the first year going upin the Val Therese area by $32, $29 in other outlying areas and $14 in the city core.

"It's a way of moving toward fairness," said city councillor Deb McIntosh, whose Ward 9includes both urban and rural areas.

"It is a difficult thing. A difficult conversation to have. I think this has been great to have the beginnings of this conversation about area rating and I think it's healthy and I think we should be doing it again."

But others, including Ward 11 councillor Bill Leduc, would have rather seen area rating scrapped altogether.

"We've had the opportunity hear to distribute the costs evenly across the city. I think we missed the boat," he said.

And some Sudbury city councillors feel it's unfair to be hiking taxes in the suburban and rural areas and pretending the fire service is the same for everyone.

"To say that what's going on in downtown is the same as what's going on in Beaver Lake would be totally nonsense because it doesn't work that way," said Ward 2 councillor Michael Vagnini.

But city councillor Mike Jakubo who represents the traditionally volunteer-served communities ofGarson, Capreol and Falconbridge says this plan moves the cityforward "logically and reasonably and very fairly" considering 6 per cent of all full-time firefighter calls are outside Sudbury proper.

"Yes, the city core has been paying a fair chunk of firefighting costs since amalgamation. Should that continue? No," said Jakubo.