This Thursday May 23rd, Victoria City Council will be making a decision with regard to permissive tax exemptions. Here’s my take. Please feel free to share.
In 2004 Council created a policy that all new applications for permissive tax exemptions that provided regional services would a get 50% permissive tax exemption; all regional organizations that already had permissive tax status at the time were grandfathered in at 100%. The proposal on the table now is to move current grandfathered organizations deemed regional in nature to 50% exempt status over the next 10 years. I think this is a good idea.
Why?
First of all, we must confront reality and realize that while the organizations in question provide amazing services to Victoria and the region, so do the very large number of other charities and non-profits that don’t own property and therefore don’t have the ability to benefit at all from the City’s tax exemption policy. In other words, there is already an unequal playing field. Property-owning non-profits and charities benefit disproportionately over those that haven’t had the ability/fortune/luck to have purchased properties or had them donated. It makes sense to me to bring all organizations which receive property tax exemptions in line with Council’s 2004 policy.
Second of all, I work in the sector. I founded and run a small non-profit society which is just moving out of start-up mode and has only a small budget and three part-time staff. We don’t own property but we do have our space donated to us by a generous landlord. Market rent at Community Micro Lending’s Gathering Place on Douglas St is $1800 a month, that’s $21,600 a year. If our landlord decided he needed the rental income and asked to charge us I would say, “Thank you very much for your generosity these past three years.” And I would find a way to make that space work, or find another, team up with another organization, etc. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I think the non-profit sector needs to become more enterprising, more resilient, not primarily dependent on grants and exemptions but more creative and more collaborative.
My vote on Thursday will reflect this perspective. And my vote has nothing to do with how much I value the goods and services provided by the grandfathered properties. I do value them, very much. And I appreciate the richness they add to the social fabric of our city and region.