Education taxes not a ‘hot mess’

While I mostly agree with Dan Lett’s analysis (Councillors brace for impact when provincial education property tax hikes hit mailboxes, March 19), there are some significant reasons to challenge his statement about education funding being “a hot mess.”

As for the suburban councillors’ despondency, I find it hard to be sympathetic. My experience has been that most homeowners, even if they do not understand fully the purposes of all property taxes, do understand that some of them go to fund city services and some to the school division they live in. This has been made clear repeatedly by the separation of the taxes on the tax notices.

In my view, councillors should be pleased that some citizens might actually consider them an essential part the adequate funding of children’s education. The issue is not, as implied, lack of accountability or ownership — nothing is hidden and trustees are quite willing to take credit for their decisions. The councillors’ complaints seem more self-serving than conscientious leadership.

What is a hot mess is what the current government was left with at the end of the last Conservative era, akin to what they were left with after the previous one — the Conservatives would do well to rethink several aspects of their political strategies. Manitobans have repeatedly let them know that they are less concerned about tax savings than they are about support for public education.

Secondly, most citizens simply don’t buy into blatant appeasement of their political friends, especially when it looks like they are more worried about their pocketbooks or being re-elected than the well-being of children and those who require government supports.

Notwithstanding the above, much ink has been devoted to making statements suggesting that the funding system is hybrid, opaque, and archaic.

If that was true it would be true of virtually all taxation and funding systems under a federal system of government. I prefer “shared” to “hybrid,” “sensible” to “archaic” and “transparent” to “opaque.” Many provinces have taken over what they call “full funding” of education much to the chagrin of local municipalities and MLAs. The results have been higher taxes, less transparency, no less finger pointing, less access to decision makers, and less responsive to local concerns.

I would argue that systems where decisions made closer to where the consequences are experienced is the bedrock of democracy — citizens need to see the results of their participation in the system at many levels. Education, while constitutionally a provincial responsibility, is in fact a local, if you wish, home grown activity. School boards, like municipalities, are a legitimate part of government attending to local matters, matters which are easily overlooked in more centralized systems. This is where local taxation becomes important.

Most citizens want their schools to be sensitive to the needs of the children in their communities and, when necessary, work directly with the people in their schools to make this happen — teachers, principals and superintendents hired and responsible locally, and trustees elected and accountable locally.

And, while many complain that voter turnout for school board elections is abysmal, and it is, parents seem to know who their trustees are when they consider a school matter to be a problem.

However, I would argue that that is not sufficient — trustees need the resources to respond to local needs and wants quickly and efficiently. For that they need to have some discretionary sources of income. And yes, they need to account for how they collect and spend that money.

What they need not do as they often do, is blame governments for underfunding as long as they have the authority to raise taxes. The previous government’s policies were a double whammy — reduced funding and capping local taxing authority.

Municipal councillors should be careful what they wish for. The previous government also had legislation on the books to limit the local authority of municipalities, particularly in the areas of planning and environmental protections. And, similar to school funding, they drastically cut their support to municipalities.

Taken together the previous government’s initiatives were, in my view, an attack on democracy on several fronts — they eroded our trust of governments in general and reduced the places and ways citizens could participate if they chose to.

If we want to fight about something, education funding is a lesser concern than the loss of democracy. After all, to uphold and maintain democratically free and empowered communities, we need to be citizens first, homeowners next and then taxpayers.

John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba.