The question was asked if all stories start with 'Once upon a time'? The answer is no; Some start with 'Once elected I promise...'!
My involvement started with letters to our local newspaper to the extent that I successfully wrote and got published a 750 word article on the Government's property tax-grab by a concocted re-evaluation scam and when the local newspaper rules limited articles to 150 words.
fading check mark in one of our city's most important check boxes; the box pertaining to the city's income producing-property tax 'reducing' commerce and industry. This fading check-box prompted me to make an appeal to city council pointing out the ramification of indifference to the health and welfare of commerce and industry.
Council was told point blanc that they were failing their city, failing their Citizens and even failing themselves!
Now, we hear a similar sound of indifference emanating from a Regional Councilor aimed at what's left of our property-tax reducing commerce: "Bottom line, i believe all businesses have a responsibility to use their power that will benefit society and our environment. The workers matter. I want to know what a business is paying their employees, does it include benefits and pensions. Do they have a diverse workforce, this includes gender, pay gaps, impact on the environment and contributions to the community. If you want a better community, with jobs that pay well, where people can live and contribute fully, we need to hold businesses responsible. If they want big contracts from major corporations (like the region), we need to set a standard of care for their employees.Amending the current policy will have a powerful, positive impact on people living in our region."
Sadly these comments totally ignore the Regional government's gross over governance and over-spending and undue empire building!
It's possible to overlook the recent wrong headed attitude toward commerce because they weren't there during our loss of major commerce, but only if ignorance of economics is a virtue. In actual fact business pays nothing to anyone for anything. Business simply passes all cost along to the consumer. If that is blocked or meddled with the business fails and disappears leaving no benefit to employees or anyone else!
Adam Smith taught that interference with free enterprise is devastating to society as is proven by the taxation levels now being born by property tax.
However, there are some who were there bearing silent witness to the devastating loss of our major commerce and industry. One who was there with nothing to say or do to assist in retaining our city's income producing commerce and industry is our fifty year failure, now appointed (not elected) Regional Chair Jimmy (Dolittle) Bradley still with nothing to say or do about new attacks on what is left of our commerce.
Sad, how many feckless know-it-alls point to any entity other than their own empire building cost to the property owner as to who should carry the burden of their bureaucratic failure!
During the Niagara Region Budget Review Committee November 16, 2023, YOU WILL witness at the 230 Min Mark, one and one only Regional Councilor desperately trying to protect his constituents!
Please, consider just what those we have hired and elected have to brag about. What about the 78 year old Port Colborne woman living in her car through 4 winters after paying her taxes all her life! Or those who can no longer afford to fix their leaky roofs. Or the ever expanding homeless trying to survive were even tents are now prohibited! All this while pay their failing police chief $675,509 and furnishing NRP with multiple taj like edifices suitable for the world's largest communities!
It happens when our government leaders become a cabal of service industry members lacking appreciation of the necessary origin of prosperity producing entities because if society doesn't Farm it, Fish it, Manufacture it, Invent it, Mine it, Tourism etc., in order to bring in the wealth needed to sustain everything we desire, then unprotected property owners must bear the brunt of excesses!
Consider what happens when a one industry municipality loses its one industry! Mining towns die when the mine plays out! When a mining town turns into a ghost town we then understand how a municipality fails to survive on only a service industry!
To be continued
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