TJ’s comment that “taxpayers contain within themselves the seeds for their own funny farm” got me to thinking. That in itself (me thinking) is a bit of a foreign travaille. The more I thought about it and the more I started researching, the more pissed off I became.  In a day when nothing stays hidden away in the confines of a filing cabinet but rather naked facts are now perched on the top of everyone desk, gyrating around a stainless-steel pole, while the viewing public is ogling at them.

You don’t have to look far into the public domain to find out some things, simply,, piss you right off. I almost wish that I never knew what hid behind that public service g-string but curiosity invoke some of the strangest characteristics in people, myself included. I am curious by nature. That why I electrocuted myself when I was six, threw up after smoking a cigarette when I was eight, and still to this day, struggle not to stick the 9 volt battery to my tongue.

 I recently discovered the Ontario Government Public Disclosure website that, essentially, lists every employee paid by the Ontario taxpayer that earns over $100,000 annually. After a couple hours of data compilation where I mud wrestled these bundles of systemic abusers from the people that actually deserve the dough, a dirty feeling came over me; I felt violated.  The feeling then moved to sickness. Then the consequence and liability lights started to brighten and I became terribly concerned.  Then it was, holy crap !!!!! I gotta get the hell out of Dodge (sic).

This peep show that I had ventured into had a bus driver in the City of Ottawa making $129,000 in only one year.  I said to myself, “ Holy F%$k”, as a saw that a Vice-President of a major University; she with 12 letters after her name, was making less than this particular bus driver.  There then appeared Scads of police constables; not inspectors or the like, but plain ordinary constables earning well into six figures. Behind door number three, I saw a room full of elementary school teachers planning what to do with their summers off, all the while earning more than a $100K annually.

Over in the champagne room were the high rollers. It was full of Electricity. Here I looked in and saw a dude in the corner being entertained by two girls named Amber and Cheyenne (those were their real names). I checked the data…..wow….the head of a major Ontario Utility. He was pulling down a tidy $1,500,000 annually. He quietly took a twenty out of my left pocket and gave it to Amber. This dude didn’t keep it all to himself. I discovered a culture of greed right throughout his organization; over 6500 employees under him had also passed the 100K plateau and God only know how many are about to pass thru that threshold in the near future.    

In all, over 36,000 Ontarians were members of this exclusive club. Club membership dues tallied a staggering $4,500,000,000.  Yes kids, those are billions!!!! Then it hit me. A bunch of questions started percolating.  What is the benefit package costing us? What is the future pension liability? What are the other future liabilities of these benefit package? At first glance, I’m assuming that they’ll being pulling in 70% pensions when they’re done being employed.  As this generation retires and new hogs belly up to the trough, we have some substantial compounding taking place.  Are we in a position to fund this? I mean to say, “Are our kids in a position to fund this?” Along with the $100K club, they are also going to have to deal with the farm team. The folk in Ontarioland that didn’t quite make it to the doors of the $100K club but still have an all day pass on the “70% Gravy Train Express”. I assume that is the fat end of the pyramid but that scares the shite out me if the pointy end has 36,000 members. How big is this liability.

The delta, at this rate, is inevitable; All our tax dollars will eventually go to salaries….nothing else.

All this perversion to take you to where we are now.  Here in the City of Ottawa…..Here in the City of Orleans.   We already see a machine here,  where too much tax revenue goes to the labour pool. Nothing is ever left for programs. Nothing for buildings. Nothing for roads. Nothing for nothing. This economic model is headed for only one conclusion…collapse….and everybody knows it when they go to sleep at night. The OC Transpo strike is just one manifestation of an ulcer bleeding and revealing  the true capacity of this City’s leadership.

I stepped out on my front step at midnight last night. I thought I smelled Thuso blowing in. Not an uncommon aroma here in Orleans. I looked a little closer. The wind was blowing to the East.

I have followed for some weeks the growing Ottawa discussion over impending property tax increases as the post-freeze scenario resets to current market values. At the heart of the story is the fact that urban, core properties will reset higher while the suburban rates lower or at least remain relatively static. In this tale of two cities, cries of ‘unfair’ may be heard on both sides: those on Frank Street overlooking the canal claim their long-standing dreams of an urban haven are at risk as market muscles flex; those on Rue Topello in Orleans can firmly and pragmatically suggest that if you want to dance, you should probably pay the fiddler.
There is no fair. There is, however, some reality to discuss. Unless someone puts a working model on the table where an alternative to property appraisals is applied, and I haven’t seen one short of a Stalinist scheme, the insatiable city bills will be paid. The tax cards will fall where they may, and some of those extrapolated ‘mays’ happen to include the verifiable notion that specific property values vary for specific reasons.
I have lived on Frank Street. It was the seventies and I was a Carleton student, mostly cashless and carefree, more likely ravenous than Raven on any given day. It was the time when somebody figured that if you cleaned the snow off the canal you could skate on it. It was the time when a quick walk across the bridge to St Patrick’s College would get you a free hop to the Carleton campus on one of the seemingly immortal blue and white Mercedes shuttles. It was the time that a bakery would flood the neighbourhood with those wonderful sweet, doughy smells every morning; the nut and fun-loving black squirrels could be mistaken for fat cats. A short walk over to and up Elgin was always fun, and the return down a tulip-laden Rideau was comforting in the civilized sense. My monthly budget was $400 and that was stretched to include tax, title, tuition, rent, books, brew and sometimes food. And it worked. Not quite halcyon days, but closer to the best of times than the worst.
Is that today’s reality? Tuition costs alone across the country hover around 5K. Canal skating is now closer to an institution than a lark. The bakery is gone as is the free bus. My former nest on Frank housing my single room for double-digit rent, is probably more desirable than ever in the quaint sense, and probably unreachable without going to six digits.
Do times change? Sure they do. Except for the squirrels, of course, those kitties on the Rideau. Last time I indulged the canal with a stroll, seems like their numbers may have edged up.

The lead on the cityoforleans.ca website, “no taxation without representation!” is certainly reminiscent of the continental experience with George III and indeed leads to the insight that Orleaneans may feel less than well-served by that turn of the century amalgamation folly with the City of Ottawa. The long-story, short version, probably hinges on the notion that a lot more tax dollars are going downstream to the Rideau than are returned in services or development, and the rank of councillors representing Orleans who could impact that flow or vision at the municipal coliseum is too thin.

At a ratio of 3/21, is Orleans adequately represented, or is amalgamation simply another example of conquering by division?

Perhaps use of the term amalgamation is too kind. The typical definition, to unite to form a single entity, was no doubt advertised with positive tales of efficiency and tax savings so profound that, when stretched end to end, would reach the outskirts of Kamloops.  My guess is that efficiencies and implied taxable kickbacks barely make it to the Queensway and no out-of-pocket savings were ever realized on the eastern front.

Combine the above two paragraphs and some citizens might tend to the tea in the harbor option.

There are a host of terms that can be employed, perhaps more accurately than amalgamate, to describe the behavior of a static or declining city state that needs new blood in the least and more dollars in the best outcome. There is annex, or take, join or incorporate as a subsidiary. Or what about Ottawaization, or become like us and wave OC Transpo transfers that are good for a hundred miles. Or, we can skip over the romance verbs/nouns for adventure and empire and go straight for the Huns’ views of municipal management; lebensraum und anschluss we’ve read about. How about a vulgar variation: taxensraum?

What are we saying here: de-amalgamate, dis-annex, re-Orleanize?  George should understand (the second time around.)

T.J. Snodgrass