BOISSEVAIN, Man. – Manitoba municipalities are planning to shout with a single-issue voice in the upcoming provincial election.
At meetings with reeves and mayors across the province, leaders of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities received support for making education taxes AMM’s only issue.
“We want all the candidates, all the parties asked about where they stand,” said AMM urban vice-president Ron Bell. “We want them to have to say what they are going to do about it.”
Right now, about half of the taxes raised for Manitoba primary and high schools come from property tax, which means municipalities must collect the money from landowners. Farmers generally abhor the system because large landowners tend to pay more property tax than urban residents.
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The AMM wants to alleviate this problem by increasing the province’s share of education funding to about 80 percent, leaving municipalities with 20 percent to collect.
The anger over the education tax issue is so high that AMM leaders want to focus all their election efforts on it to ensure the issue is not ignored in the cacophony of a many-issue approach.
Bell, who was one of the AMM executives who conducted cross-province hearings in mid-March, said municipal officials want this issue dealt with now.
At the Boissevain meeting, Rural Municipality of Elton reeve Jon Burton said farmers in his area would support the AMM’s strategy.
“I think it is the number one issue to the farm community,” he said.
“It’s all just being dumped on farm families and their income can’t take it.”
Another rural reeve said farmers don’t mind paying education tax on their homes, but they don’t think it is fair to have to pay education tax on their large land bases.
Bell said AMM wanted to focus on lowering the percentage of education tax that property taxes had to cover rather than challenging the overall practice of taking education taxes out of property taxes.
