Or permission to use it. The market definitely doesn’t have glass bay doors…

I was just reading a thread from Montreal where locals were (understandably so) complaining about their municipal taxes going up by 9%.

A perfectly legitimate reason for individuals to bring up questions about fiscal discipline and responsibility, etc.

Then I saw the figures that were being discussed.

$1800-$2200 annually for an average property in desirable neighborhoods of Montreal.

Then I started looking at what the average property in my neighbor would compare with theirs.

(Now I understand that this comes from a position of privilege, although these are mostly very average 50+ year old bungalows that just happen to have had their value explode for no rational reason at this point)

-A condo assessed at $535K will pay $2578 in annual taxes in Montreal. The same property value in Dieppe costs $8200. That’s MORE THAN THREE TIMES MORE!

And it’s not an isolated event due to the density in Montreal, you can go in the deep suburbs more than an hour out of town in the eastern townships or on Montérégie in communities smaller than Moncton and they pay EVEN LESS per dollar of valuation that we do!

And these are outlying communities with brand new, world class community halls, public theatres, sport centers (not just arenas, but also arenas), neighborhood indoor and out public pools, free public activities, municipal summer camps, nature and play parks that put all of our best ones to shame, urbanism standards, shared transportation infrastructure, public transit that actually is functional and appealing to use, etc.

So where is our money going? There are countless properties in the area that pay more than 10K annually in municipal taxes, yet the neighborhoods have little to services short of garbage disposal and road maintenance. And let’s be honest, this town looks like we just lost a war against enemy troops and have yet to have found the ressources to rebuild.

What in the actual fuck.

/endofrant