It's not the big taxes that upset most people as much as the little taxes that invade the middle of every day.
This is where the City of Prince George might be going in the completely wrong direction, by trying to keep its annual tax increase as low as possible but raising additional revenue by implementing new service charges and jacking up pre-existing user fees.
While there was regular grumbling about municipal taxes five years ago, it simmered along for the most part. In 2008, a report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business showed the city's spending had grown twice as fast as the rate of inflation and population growth between 2000 and 2006. Except for coffee shop rants, the report didn't make any difference.
That same year, the city's unionized staff voted to accept a new five-year contract with three-per-cent annual wage increases. A month earlier, they had rejected the city's "final offer" of a three-year-deal for three per cent each year, insisting on four per cent in the final year. The city got its final offer and the union got a longer-term deal.
The union knew the good times were coming to an end.
""We wanted that extra per cent heading into 2011 and 2012 as we don't think negotiating after the Olympics is going to be too prosperous for us," said Dennis Marleau, the president of the CUPE local representing the city's outside workers. "With them offering three per cent on a five-year deal, it was something we couldn't turn down."
My, how things have changed.
Today, the rage over city tax rates runs at a full boil each day. Prince George residents have had it, both with how much municipal tax they pay and how little return they get for those taxes.
Mayor and council have worked hard to lower the annual tax hike but the cost of reducing the annual tax increase has to be paid somewhere and so the city find itself on its current path, best known as death by a thousand cuts.
The problem with adding new fees and raising the ones already in place is that they serve as a constant reminder that residents are paying taxes. This mayor and council have increased utilities, increasing downtown off-street parking rates, wanted to increase on-street parking rates, increased user fees for arenas and swimming pools, and increased business licence fees and added homeowners with suites.
And, in the end, they still voted to raise the municipal tax rate and are set to do so again for 2014.
All taxpayers see is increases everywhere and all the time.
The only positive is that these user-pay taxes are visible and transparent, unlike so many provincial and federal taxes tucked into other spending. Residents pay both a provincial and federal sales tax but complain about high prices in local stores. Drivers blame oil companies for the high price of fuel, even though about 25 per cent of the price of gas is tax. Same thing for airlines.
Speaking of airlines, when a plane's engine is threatening to stall, a pilot's temptation is to pull back on the yoke and raise the plane's nose to maintain altitude. Unfortunately, that increases the likelihood of a stall by forcing the struggling engine to work even harder. The proper response is to push forward, pointing the nose down to gradually decrease altitude and lower speed, giving the engine time to recover.
Residents want the pilot (mayor and council) to push forward, lower the annual tax increase and decrease spending to give the engine (taxpayers) a break. The city has forced the library, Initiatives Prince George and Tourism Prince George to do it, so why can't it do the same?
Increasing user fees may have seemed like the smart thing to do (and the one recommended by the high-priced core review consultants) but it's been a political disaster that has raised revenues but also the ire of taxpayers.
When local residents see themselves paying more taxes all the time, they can't help but get more mad all the time. When playing the blame game about taxes, it helps to have a scapegoat.
Or nine of them.
