COLLINGWOOD CONDOMINIUM RATEPAYERS
ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER
Vol. 1 Issue 3 Dec. 30, 2005
by Nancy Rowe
Executive Members for 2006: Nancy Rowe: President, Secretary
Bonny Griffiths: Vice-President, Liaison with County Simcoe and Collingwood.
Wendy Ward-Price, Treasurer, Liaison with MPP
Board of Directors:
Lee Bertouche: Liaison with V.O.T.E. and Public Relations
Maggie Durnford
Dick Goodwin
Gary Hooper: past president
Carolyn Moerschner: Recruitment
Advisors: Todd Johnson
John Saul
Blake Wallace - Legal
Happy New Year to all of our loyal members and to our very helpful property
managers.
We had a very busy year and we are making progress in terms of getting parity
for our condo owners regarding rebates. Every day brings us closer to our
objectives. Every time a letter has been written we get further along the road
to success.
To briefly re-cap the last year’s events, in March we invited CAFTA and Paul
Hazel the president to speak to you folks about taxes and Market Value
Assessment (MVA). There was standing room only. He expressed at that time that
the system “was broken and needed to be fixed”. Although we have not heard form
CAFTA since then we hope they are pursuing tax reform at the Ontario
Legislature.
We then proceeded to make a presentation to Council in June for a rebate for the
condominium owners for taxes paid when services were not supplied. The turn out
of interested members at Town Hall was more than we could have hoped for at that
meeting and we must have impressed the Mayor and Councillors that we are strong
in numbers and in support.
On July 26 we received a letter from Deputy Mayor Sandra Cooper, which many if
not all of you were able to read. A firm reply was written and sent to Sandra
Cooper, at which time Mayor, Terry Geddes contacted us to arrange a meeting in
the new year about our concerns as condominium owners.
In August, 2005, the CCRA arranged a private meeting with MPAC representatives
(who were subcontracted by the Ontario Government to analyze the market value of
homes for the purpose of property taxation) to ask specific questions about how
taxes were formulated and how homes and condos were compared based on real
estate sales, during a specific period of time. As you remember, Paul Hazel from
CAFTA, said this was a complicated and unfair system of calculating taxes. We
prepared questions in advance and asked the hard questions especially about how
sales of homes could be properly and adequately be compared to other homes sold.
Their answers were well rehearsed and pat and we learned nothing new. We asked
how home sale comparisons were made, asked if the system was fair and asked
about the transparency of application of MVA. We asked if the procedure was
understandable by the people paying property tax. They supplied us with
rehearsed answers that made MVA sound wonderful.
When our property taxes were released in October, 2005, many questions arose.
Issues were being brought up every night on the Toronto news . All Ontario home
owners were asking the same questions about Market Value Assessment. We
contacted the Ombudsman of Ontario to make a formal complaint on behalf of the
CCRA and it’s members. The complaint consisted of the lack of fairness of
assessing for taxes and all the irregularities found through those members who
contacted the CCRA with their tax statements. A copy of the letter to the
Ombudsman will be found on our web site in January.
During the Fall, we were also gathering information about garbage and the
garbage contract made by Simcoe County and Mid Ontario Disposal. It seems that
after investigation, town houses, apartment buildings and condominiums were not
included in the language of the garbage contract thereby including us all as
“single dwellings”. However, we pay more than single dwellings to have garbage
removed. We found out from you folks that every corporation is paying a
different amount to Mid Ontario Disposal. One condominium corporation is paying
an increase of 165% over last year to have garbage removed. Some condominiums
had no increase in garbage fees and others were able to get reductions in their
fees somehow. A meeting concerning this inflammatory issue was finally held on
Dec 15, 2005, after an ultimatum was sent to Simcoe County Environmental
Services, comprising of Don Green, Town Environmental Officer, Bonny Griffiths,
Gary Hooper, Tina Nautraus and Simcoe County Staff. The discussions and
negotiations are going forward and will be continued in the new year. Currently,
there is no fair fee schedule published to ensure equity among the condominium
corporations for garbage and recycling. The lack of government representation
for it’s constituents, at the time of garbage negotiations, was shocking to us,
especially when the negotiations were being conducted, the CCRA was making a
presentation to Council about that very concern.
In the Fall, we solicited the assistance of our MPP, Jim Wilson to facilitate a
meeting with the Ministry of Finance and the CCRA. Issues being brought forward
are first, the desired change of status form “single dwelling” to that of
“Condominium, residential” for the purpose of more fair property taxation;
second, to address the Market Value Assessment and tax reform. We have recently
received a letter from Mr. Jim Wilson MPP Simcoe-Grey, stating that he had
“taken the extraordinary step of tabling his dissatisfaction with the lack of
response to [his] letters to the Ministry of Finance regarding a meeting on [the
CCRA’s] behalf”. He sent us a copy of the ORDERS and NOTICES PAPER of the
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY that outlines Mr. Wilson’s inquiry. An answer from Mr.
McGuinty is forthcoming.
We have quite accidentally discovered that the Resolution put forth to all
Ontario Municipalities in 2004 by CAFTA and the Municipality of Trent Hills, was
indeed passed in 2004 by Collingwood Council. We presented the Resolution in our
presentation to Council last June, since we were told that the current local
government did not receive a Resolution from Trent Hills in 2004. It also was
not addressed in Sandra Coopers letter to us. Sometimes it appears as if part of
Council doesn’t know what the other part of Council knows. This exercise in
futility was discovered when Sandra Cooper responded to a private letter written
during our letter writing campaign showing the Resolution as adopted by Council
2004. This response was not sent to the CCRA however when we enquired about it
specifically. For those of you who have forgotten, the Resolution was
distributed to all municipalities about unfair Market Value Assessment and how a
new system needed to be developed for fair taxation. The municipal government
says they have no power over property tax and MVA. We have proposed to Council
that there seems to be a lack of will to make it more fair where it is possible.
If any of you did participate in the letter writing campaign, we would like to
know about the response you received from Council or Sandra Cooper. Please
contact us if you sent a letter to Sandra Cooper.
Included in your newsletter is your condominium corporation CCRA renewal form
for the coming year. Some of you will notice that we also have a membership for
single condo owners called individual membership. The reason we developed
individual memberships is that originally, some condominium corporations either
didn’t want to join the CCRA or hadn’t gotten around to it but individual owners
wanted to belong and be kept up to date with information. Every individual
member has their newsletter mailed directly to them instead of waiting for their
corporation or management company to get it to them. We have been hearing from
owners of Corporations that newsletters aren’t getting out to the owners. Here
is the problem. When the Privacy Act was enacted last year, management companies
were no longer able to give out owners’ information, so we couldn’t send mail to
each owner. The expense of sending mail to each owner would be prohibitive for
the CCRA but for your corporation it only adds up to a few dollars if mailed,
and free if hand delivered. The agreement we have with most of the management
companies is that they will let the board of directors or the president of a
corporation know that a newsletter has been sent in by us. The board of
directors or president will then decide how the information will be
disseminated. Some corporations place one copy in a central location and some
corporations make sure every owner gets a full copy of the information we have
sent. When you don’t receive your newsletter every quarter you should know why.
People with individual memberships don’t worry about how they will receive their
newsletters. Some management companies are so thorough and helpful that they
mail every condo owner a copy and charge it back to the corporation
automatically. Understandably, Rupert’s Landing has had problems in the past
receiving their copies of the newsletter but with the help of Susan Campbell-Fournel
we have an up to date list of the corporation presidents and they will be
receiving the mailings directly until a new management company has been hired.
It will be their responsibility to get it out to each of their owners. We hope
that none of you have questioned what the CCRA has been doing for you by not
receiving your newsletters. All of you have the option of becoming individual
members at $15.00 per year if you chose, even if your condominium has a group
membership. The rate for condominiums is $35.00 per year for all of it’s owners.
The money we collect goes in a few different directions. We are a not for profit
organization. We had to pay the county to get a listing of all the condominium
corporations in Simcoe County for example, where we discovered that Collingwood
has 25% of all the condominiums in Simcoe County. Last year we joined CAFTA on
your behalf. This year we hope to join the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. This
is a national not for profit group who represent every province regarding all
issues surrounding taxation. This includes lobbying against Market Value
Assessment and gaining parity for condominium owners. We can work successfully
with this hard working group to ensure our issues are addressed. Their web site
is a very interesting place to visit WWW. canadiantaxpayersfederation.ca.. We
also pay for photocopying and mailing. You may contact us at anytime with your
email address so we can stay in touch at times other than the sending of
Newsletters. Especially now, we want to be able to send out information via
email just to keep you informed on a regular basis. In lieu of that you can
access almost everything we do by checking the CCRA web site. WWW.
collingwoodcondoratepayers.com.
With many new condominiums being built and registered there is a need to stay on
top of recruiting new members as they come along. If you know of any condo
corporation we may have missed, please let us know through our web site or by
mail or you may call me at 443-8673. There is strength in numbers and with the
municipal elections soon approaching, this is a time for us to collectively make
good political decisions especially if we can all get behind a few really good
candidates willing to support our concerns. We will let you know all the
candidates that the CCRA has scrutinized and then summarize candidate platforms
so you can stay informed. We are planning to interview members of Council who
will run again, as well as the mayoral candidates, and any new candidates. If
they do not wish to speak with us, we will pass that on to you also.
We are actively recruiting Board members. We appreciate interested people but
our needs are:
• a self starter, working independently, able to complete a job on schedule
• good computer skills
• accounting experience or
• tax specialist or
• legal professional or
• real estate broker or property developer.
If you have the skills but don’t want to commit the time, we would consider you
an advisor.
Our web site has been built and maintained by one advisor, Todd Johnson and we
thank him vigorously for his help in this capacity. We would like to acknowledge
the wonderful job Todd has done and continues to do for us.
We would like to thank Gary Hooper for his work as President of CCRA last year
and his devotion to the mission and goals of the CCRA. Thanks Gary, for a job
well done!
The next newsletter will be published in April 2006. We continue to value your
support.
Please visit our website for more information
regarding the
COLLINGWOOD
CONDOMINIUM RATEPAYERS ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER