r/Hamilton • u/IanBorsuk • 2d ago
Municipal Election 2026 Hamilton taxpayers need a collective reality check
https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/hamilton-taxpayers-need-a-collective-reality-check/article_e7426cad-08b0-55e4-8922-755f33e1f9cb.html•
u/callmeperhaps 1d ago
Time to revisit area rating. As we insist on (and are forced to) continue building sprawl, how services are delivered has changed. I used to live on the central mountain, paying 40% of the property tax I pay now in the lower city.
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u/Affectionate-Arm-405 1d ago
And I live rural and I have no water, no sewer, no sidewalk, no busses, etc. my taxes are pretty high
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
Depends on the value of your property I guess.
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u/Affectionate-Arm-405 1d ago
Well yeah I know.. but the point for taxes is to pay for services. Not to penalize people if their property value goes up. And the socialist system works well most of the time to get people to pay for services used by other people but a minimum balance needs to be maintained
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
What would you define as a minimum balance?
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u/Affectionate-Arm-405 1d ago
For people that get zero or close to zero in services, there should be some sort of a relief. Or at least some extra service they get instead.
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
I think that’s what’s area rating already does? I think it’s also important to consider the services do you get, even if you don’t use them. Or that the City spends more to offer some services rural than it would cost in more dense areas such as snow clearing.
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u/IveComeToMingle 1d ago
There is no solution except to plan your escape and move.
I like my house here but this is getting ridiculous and compounding yearly.
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u/shaddupsevenup Durand 1d ago
I’m moving next year. Lived here for over twenty years but I’ve had it. The city is gross and there are so many much nicer cities to live in. I can’t stand it here.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 2d ago
After the big download from Provincial to Municipal responsibility (Thanks Mike Harris!) there should have been a reconstruction of the available revenue streams for cities. With the only stream being property tax and an ever increasing set of services to cover, there isn’t much choice.
We scared away or lost a huge amount of industrial tax base and we can’t seem to make the decisions that would change that and the rates charged for residential are (in my opinion) too low to begin with.
In the same way that people voted for years to keep taxes low and now our critical care wards are full of people who need long term care beds, or who vote now to continue to underfund education and route that money instead towards the jail system… you get what you pay for.
The amount of shortsighted people pleasing that politicians do in Hamilton combined with the “we don’t deserve nice things” crowd and the constant push for Cheap vs. Effective is crazy.
I’ve only lived in Hamilton for about 20 years (but have also lived in Guelph, Burlington, Oakville, Mississauga, and Toronto) but I’ve watched decisions at City Hall made and unmade with the predictable frequency of a flashing “check engine” light that just kicks the can and ignores reality - exactly as the article says.
The result? We are not leaving Hamilton a better place for our children’s children. We aren’t leaving a legacy of making it better than we found it. But we are letting the loudest voices - the few - “win” at the expense of the many. And that’s just sad.
But what can we / should we change?
* increased assessment of value for money in all departments - I’m not convinced by the police that they are spending wisely.
* where specific skills are required, pay market rates - if you pay 60% of what the private sector does, shocked Pikachu is not a look you’re allowed to have (I’m looking at cybersecurity really hard here.)
* hire proven management skill, this applies to both the city and the school boards - some of the worst management techniques available are worlds ahead of what I’ve seen.
* hold developers accountable - both residential and commercial - if the new build houses have as many code violations as necessary for whole seasons of Mike Holmes, then the rest of the subdivision is probably just as shit - and the infrastructure is a lot harder to fix than the bad insulation. And the commercial development needs a hammer blow - starting with the criminal mastermind who designed the parking lots at every big box destination. If they build it shitty, make them build it again.
And for goodness sake, figure out what the real tax rate should be based on doing a good job of maintaining our city and then make a plan to get there - including doing something about the backlog. And while you’re doing that, just make this year’s increase 12% and let’s get moving dammit.
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u/Direct-Season-1180 1d ago
The cybersecurity incident didn’t happen because they have a bad IT department. The IT department enabled and tried to rollout MFA but all of the old higher ups who thought going on their phone would be a hassle told them not to.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 1d ago
I’ve rolled out security improvements for the last 30 years across all kinds of industries against some pretty strong headwinds.
A combination of bad IT department (you know… the one internationally known for its nazi issues) and bad technology choices (MFA can be built out in many ways that have greater or lower user friction and effectiveness). And a complete lack of management and leadership which would have started by making “the old guard” into the team backing the project and invested in its success - literally failing at the fundamentals from the top all the way to the bottom.
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u/Direct-Season-1180 1d ago
I also work in tech at a large corp and the IT department can’t do anything if they are constantly undermined and underfunded by dinosaurs that don’t see a point in IT until a disaster happens.
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u/FantasticMushroom951 1d ago
This is correct, MFA rollout never should have been an option. The IT department should have said this is happening and the only valid response from every department should have been "ok sounds good"
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u/Direct-Season-1180 1d ago
I agree. I’ve never worked anywhere that anyone has a say over IT rollouts except IT. Government is backwards and Hamilton is worse than most governments.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 1d ago
In my experience, that’s an ineffective IT leader. Information is the lifeblood of any corporate organization and a leader who can’t make that clear to the rest of the leadership team shouldn’t be the leader.
And you’re never going to have “enough” budget - you’ll always be short. A good leader can find ways to make the shortage hurt less.
And if an organization can’t attract and maintain a leader like that, in my opinion it’s an organization that deserves what it gets.
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u/Direct-Season-1180 1d ago
Sure, I’m not sure about the leadership in the IT department. I just a few people that are entry/intermediate level that are talented and didn’t appreciate being scapegoated by the leadership and council.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 1d ago
I appreciate that. And if I wasn’t clear, I was focusing on middle-upper management. It’s not on a mid20s newly minted professional to know how to lead change in a complex environment.
Also, your friends are definitely underpaid, but I did my stint working for the government so that I could sleep at night in the private sector.
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u/loftwyr Eastmount 1d ago
That's just one aspect. Much of the IT infrastructure was way past end of life. There was no budget for upgrades. So eventually, ransomware was able to get in.
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u/Direct-Season-1180 1d ago
Yes, budget is a part of the issue here. The city didn’t see a point in funding IT and actively worked against their own department until disaster struck. Then they used them as a scapegoat.
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u/enki-42 Gibson 1d ago
Good IT makes a case and argues for their position. Underpay people and they'll shrug their shoulders and leave the city vulnerable.
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u/Direct-Season-1180 1d ago
The city didn’t see a point in funding IT and actively worked against their own department until disaster struck. Then they used them as a scapegoat.
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u/thisoldhouseofm 2d ago
Tax rates at federal and provincial levels started declining in the late 1970s, around the same time as the US and UK. We also have far fewer working adults relative to retirees, and the average person lives much longer.
Combine all those factors and people should be surprised at declining government services. It’s not mismanagement, it’s basic math.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 2d ago
What I’m suggesting is that it is mismanagement by the voters at the time. They voted in the most selfish way possible and left the problems to someone else without a single thought.
But they are dead or dying and we can make the decision to perpetuate their bad decisions or we can make the decision to eat a big bucket of shit and be better. Leave a legacy that isn’t as critically embarrassing.
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u/Average-Hamiltonian 1d ago
There is so much to blame currently on what happened to tax policy in the late 70s and 80s
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u/yakadayaka 1d ago
If you ever decide to run for mayor please be assured of my vote.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 1d ago
Ha! Thanks but I’ll pass…
I have near zero patience for bullshit and I would get ejected from a council meeting in the first 5 minutes.
And my wife would preemptively file for divorce.
And and the campaign interview with Joey Coleman would be abjectly hilarious (we’ve been friends for years and years)
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u/rsgnl 1d ago
What is the actual solution, though?
If the article is accurate that we have an $8 billion infrastructure deficit and that raising property taxes by 1% raises an extra $8 million per year, that would take 1,000 years to total $8 billion.
I don’t mind a single-digit percentage point increase to my property taxes, but based on that math it genuinely seems like property taxes can’t solve this?
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u/SapphireGoat_ 2d ago
Every year it seems we pay more and get less.
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u/HANDS_4_DICKS 2d ago
The "get less" part only seems that way because this city has chosen to underfund itself for decades, and recent increases are not enough to bring it into surplus. Hamilton taxpayers are some of the dumbest in the country imo
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u/RobsRedditAcct 2d ago
The get less could also be attributed to the lack of project oversight. Tiny home one example, read Joey Colman's article on the bungled carpet replacement at City Hall, cybersecurity breach these are a few of the giant waste of taxpayer dollars that could have been avoided. If course the lack of infrastructure investment contributes but there are things they could do to mitigate the damage to the ratepayers.
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u/djaxial 2d ago
To add to this, the lack of accountability after the fact is also glaring. The cybersecurity incident has never been explained, nor has anyone been held accountable. I work in cybersecurity; every day I read postmortems and reports from major companies that lay out what went wrong so we can all learn from one another and move forward. This is an established industry norm.
From the city? Crickets. It absolutely smacks of a cover-up and protectionism.
And this flows into every other bungled job and project. No one is being held accountable. Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 1d ago
Don’t even get me started on the unexplained cybersecurity incident.
There’s a whole group of absolutely world class information security professionals who live here but cannot justify making 1/3rd of the going rate for the work to save the city from itself.
They got what they were willing to pay for…. And then stuck us with the bill by using the single most expensive consulting firm to do the review work. It would have been absolutely cheaper to just pay for quality work in the first place.
Sounds a lot like the Red Hill Valley road design and pavement issues doesn’t it?
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u/loftwyr Eastmount 1d ago
Those is a great proof of what the article says. Artificially low property tax increases every year hamstrings the city's ability to fund even IT infrastructure costs and wages for professionals. But if someone ran for mayor on the needed increases, nobody would vote for them.
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u/Myrcurial Homeside 1d ago
Absolutely correct. But maybe the tides are turning. Maybe.
I really hope so.
My vote will go to the people who are loudest about accountability and performance. I will loudly challenge anyone who even mumbles about keeping tax increases low.
And I’ll go absolutely bananas cheering for anyone who pushes for progressive taxation rates for owners of significant property and especially speculators who are holding serviced land hostage.
Actually, that deserves an explanation…
Land that is already serviced (sewage, water, power) are in and available — is better to build on than land that requires new installations because the new installation is a future liability - it will have to be maintained and updated. When you drive past a large block of land that is vacant and has been vacant for some time, it’s wasting the value of the infrastructure.
Landowners who are holding for some future value while denying any use now are societally hostile at best, but more like parasites that drag the rest of us down.
The vacant property tax isn’t high enough as long as it is a “cost of doing business” - there are enough purpose-built residential buildings going in brown-field development (the ones at the traffic circle went up fast and look great) to prove that this city can use nearly unlimited affordable housing.
Make it happen by squeezing.
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u/babeli 1d ago
They explained that they didn’t implement MFA despite it being a requirement of their insurance. After that I don’t know, but it’s a pretty glaring issue
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u/djaxial 1d ago
Yeah, I've pieced together some elements of the attack from rumours, press clippings, etc., but the fact that they won't spell out, end-to-end, how this happened generally points to glaring 'we have to hide this' incompetence.
If this was a very sophisticated attack, they would have said as much, i.e. We did everything we could, but this still happened; I can accept that. It happens.
But this sounds like someone had a "1234" password and that was it.
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
I’m not sure it’s been made clear that the lack of MFA was the root issue. That came about because their insurer declined to cover this because they didn’t have MFA rolled out which the insurance was apparently contingent on.
What I find most insane about the incident is the fact that the entire City was taken down. However they got in, they then had full access to the entire network and systems.
On top of that, the City was not able to use or access backups either. For example the entire dog license database was lost.
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u/djaxial 1d ago
Yeah, that’s why I’m so interested it. MFA explains an access route. But it doesn’t explain why the whole city was knocked out. Simply having access to one account should not give that level of access over all. If it did, that’s simply egregious and even more reason that someone should be held accountable, if not facing charges.
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
For sure. Apparently the final report is contained in meeting notes somewhere which supposedly contains more details of what went down. But I haven’t had a chance to dig it up and review it.
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u/FerretStereo 1d ago
The cyber attack (let's call it was it was) happened because, despite repeated warnings by the city's insurance provider, some staff didn't want to bother with MFA (which in this day and age should be grounds for dismissal). This was exploited and because they were explicitly warned by their insurance provider like 14 months before it happened, they weren't covered
Their consultant spoke at a council meeting like a year ago and basically said it was entirely avoidable and caused by this resistance to adopt the most basic security best practices by the city (if I had to guess, some of the old guard that is allergic to change)
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
From what I’ve heard speculated about the MFA issue, certain staff and unions pushed back because they didn’t want to use their personal phones for the MFA applications or they argued they shouldn’t have to if it isn’t in their contract. Naturally the solution would be to use physical security keys instead.
I’d be curious now what they have in place for MFA since I’m going to assume they finally did bite the bullet and implement it org wide.
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u/Motor-Cut7207 1d ago
Microsoft Authenticator.
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
Do they require employees to have the app on their personal device if they don’t have a work issued one?
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u/rudthedud 1d ago
The fact they had a report saying this would happen months before and it was ignored by council members is a big red flag
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u/HANDS_4_DICKS 1d ago
Agreed 100%. We need better councillors who make city staff take accountability, while also not being afraid to raise taxes to cover the infrastructure deficit
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u/RobsRedditAcct 1d ago
They also need to work to attract businesses to help offset the burden on the home owners. Higher property taxes are passed on in rent increases. Overall they are contributing to the unafforability issues.
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u/HANDS_4_DICKS 1d ago
Attracting businesses would involve walkable and bike-able streets to attract more customers, which the residents of the outer city are allergic to
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u/MalfuriousPete 2d ago
Beacause we keep electing useless councilors? I guess the flip side is that since every home now in the city is $1m+ for some reason, taxes should increase to account for this paper wealth
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u/tastycat 2d ago
That’s not how municipal taxation works
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u/rbart4506 2d ago
Glad to see someone gets it.
These uninformed rants get tiresome and accomplish nothing.
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u/loftwyr Eastmount 1d ago
It was supposed to. Ontario was supposed to have moved to Market Value Assessment for taxation. However, that didn't happen. My house's assessed value is below what I paid for it 10 years ago.
Even the provincial government is afraid of raising taxes needed to fund cities.
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u/tastycat 1d ago
That’s not even really my point. If the province did the reassessments your assessed tax rate probably wouldn’t change much because everyone else’s assessment would be that much higher too, so your actual tax paid also wouldn’t change.
Unlike many other forms of taxation, where taxation is based on the value of something, municipal taxes work backwards from the municipal budget and are assessed proportionally.
The value of an individual property doesn’t matter other than as a proportion of the whole when it comes to municipal taxes, and an increase in property value doesn’t increase the city’s revenue in any way.
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u/Username_Query_Null 2d ago
This isn’t how property taxes work. If all houses go up in value the same percentage, property taxes wouldn’t change.
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u/thisoldhouseofm 2d ago
Some of the loudest voices against property tax increases are seniors, who point out that they’re on a fixed income.
If you have a paid off house (that has massively increased in value in the find you owned it), and your “fixed income” is CPP, OAS, and your own retirement savings, then you don’t get to cry poverty. We should still have a way to help seniors who are truly struggling to make ends meet, but the demographic reality now is that seniors are largely the wealthier age cohort.
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u/thisoldhouseofm 2d ago
If an 8% increase is needed to just maintain things, and council votes to keep the increase at 4%, that succeeds in accomplishing you both laying more and getting less.
With wage increases alone and inflation, it’s impossible for tax rates to stay flat without noticeable cuts.
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u/covert81 Chinatown 1d ago
The point being though, those cuts can come from lots of places without it actually impacting service.
Do a line by line review of all expenses for all city departments. You will find savings. Bloat exists everywhere when taxpayer money is involved.
Trim away the unnecessary. Easy ones are things like use of consultants and frivolous policies; things like "race to spend the budget before the year ends or you lose it for next year", unnecessary departments (like the climate change office - this is not a municipal need at this juncture); Encouraging city staff to take mass transit instead of driving (or unnecessary city vehicles); review of cycles for replacing/renewing vehicles, furniture, etc.
This would net a great starting point. Then, we can start to review what is actually being deferred because it could or should be, or because it's expensive and not 'sexy' - like most infrastructure.
When the deferred work fails and costs us more in emergency repairs I'd love to see that number splashed up to show how we end up spending even more as a result of this "fiscal restraint"
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u/thisoldhouseofm 1d ago
Rob Ford had exactly this approach when he became mayor of Toronto in 2010. He and Doug insisted they could reduce the budget to end the “gravy train”.
The end result was that there were minor savings, but nowhere near the magnitude they were selling. If anyone could or would have done this it was the Fords, and they couldn’t, because the level of fat they claimed was there simply didn’t exist.
I’d assume this is true of most municipalities. While a few million dollars in “bloat” seems like a lot, relative to the total budget it’s a rounding error. You could probably cancel every single consultant contract the city has and you wouldn’t even notice in your tax bill.
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u/covert81 Chinatown 1d ago
Several million dollars equates to less taxes throughout.
And while that's all well and good that Toronto did that, we can do it too and see if we find better or different results.
Having worked at city hall I know there are too many people, too many managers managing too few people/projects and lots of general waste. That all adds up. I'll take 1-5M in savings since that shows actual respect for our tax dollars.
Likewise, you skirted around the use of consultants and other pieces like promoting mass transit, less frequent refresh cycles etc. All of that would net savings. Like think about if you did not enter into a 3 year deal for vehicles. Enter into a 5 year deal or hell even a 10 year deal. Have city staff treat the vehicles as if they were their own and hold them accountable for their use, including GPS monitoring, idle hours review, mileage checks and so forth. I had to do all that when I worked for a large multinational company so having the municipality do it would be a snap. There's no will to save money since it's not seen as a disappearing revenue source.
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u/JohnnyOnslaught 1d ago
It's doubtful that there's that much to make regarding savings. If anything, you might end up spending more on accountants than you gain back. That's just the reality of it.
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u/covert81 Chinatown 1d ago
Welp, let's do the work and see. If not, then people like me will close their mouths. But since it will net savings, it's worth doing.
To suggest that we shouldn't do it because we won't get a lot of savings is absolutely the mindset of city hall. It's ridiculous.
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
Let’s not forget that the City hadn’t issued proper financial statements for the past 2 years because of the cyber attack and isn’t expected to have them until at least after the election.
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u/FantasticMushroom951 1d ago
It seems you get less because most of the infrastructure work is spread across the entire city. So yeah maybe you don't get anything major in your area but there are large swaths on Hamilton that requires millions and millions of infrastructure work that's been put off for decades.
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u/Confident-Touch-6547 2d ago
This is because Mike Harris downloaded costs onto the municipal tax base. Costs that are increasing over time.
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u/Soft_Candidate6498 1d ago
Maybe we should elect someone who doesn’t want to add to the police force… they are always the biggest line in the budget
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u/Ultragorgeous 1d ago
It's fun to say 'deferred maintenance is real debt' to a city with a huge percentage of the population on fixed incomes, low incomes, and stagnant incomes.
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u/Healthy-Stomach-5376 1d ago
We pay enough - time to clean the city out and replace it with competence. If you ever worked for the city, you know how badly our taxes are being wasted. We don't have a say in how our taxes are spent or what is prioritized.
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u/nikkisouthbend 1d ago
This is the major flaw in a democracy — it assumes that voters are unemotional and informed.
A boisterous mayoral candidate who campaigns on a single issue, regardless of whether they actual demonstrate an effective strategy to achieve their goal, will always defeat a practical candidate who campaigns on long-term solutions that will save tax-payers money, and improve infrastructure and quality of life.
Voting eligibility should be dependant on a civics and a pattern recognition test. Watch how quickly government starts working for the people.
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u/WDIIP 1d ago
I'm all for increasing civics education, but you can't withhold voting rights behind a test. There's a long history of biased test design, used to deliberately bar certain demographics from participating in democracy. That's one of the big things the Voting Rights Act outlawed in the States.
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u/brokenstrs 1d ago
No, the Hamilton Police and their nearly 400 million dollar budget need a reality check and people of this city need to stop relying on a defunct useless "newspaper" for "news".
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u/Icy-Computer-Poop 1d ago
Citizens: We want our city maintained properly.
Government: yeah, so we'll need to raise property taxes.
Citizens: What? I'm voting you out and voting in someone who won't raise my taxes!
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u/slownightsolong88 1d ago
For some it comes down to a lack of trust and confidence in both city staff and elected officials, this is supported by major events that have eroded public trust.
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u/theninjasquad Crown Point West 1d ago
Agreed. People don’t feel or observe that the City is managing their tax dollars efficiently. Especially when there’s been so many scandals over the past while that have cost the City a lot of money.
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u/ro0625 1d ago
In a normal situation that's sound logic.
They expanded Rymal to 2 lanes way out in what used to be an almost completely rural area, yet it's only one lane in our part of the city despite multiple developments being built along it in the past decade. They really can't manage the most basic things.
I have no faith that this city's government has a clue what they're doing. Unfortunately, it's not like we can do anything else but hope they use the money well.
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u/slownightsolong88 1d ago
Unfortunately, it's not like we can do anything else but hope they use the money well.
We can vote them all out to send a message.
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u/PromontoryPal 1d ago
Nice to see the HDLC President focus on this topic, instead of like trying to demand the NHL apologize for some slight 100 years ago.
Must be election season for the HDLC too!
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u/Sporting1983 1d ago
Every year we pay more and more and roads are dog shit...and this year they didn't even close the linc for maintenance if anyone noticed
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u/nuclearnerd 1d ago
Almost like the more roads we build, the more maintenance we have to pay for ..
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u/J-Lughead 15h ago
Taxpayers don't have a problem with infrastructure projects. It's asinine to think we do.
What we have a problem with is uncontrolled spending on idiotic notions and "nice to have" projects during these current financial times we live in.
One such project that should be put aside for projects more urgent is the walkway bridge over the Linc that will sit right next to Upper Wentworth Street. This is definitely a "nice to have" and not a "need to have" project.
I know the Federal government is heavily subsidizing it but our council could easily have the Feds redirect that funding to other more pressing issues.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hamilton/comments/1w63h5y/hamilton_councillors_approves_plan_to_build/
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u/timmeh87 1d ago
this article has some good points. it's also making the AI detector in my head scream "this is written by chatgpt"
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