Achi news desk-
After being inundated with complaints from frustrated and stressed residents who received incorrect bills, many saying they owed the city thousands of dollars, Toronto city councilors grilled city staff over the introduction of this year’s vacant home tax before voting in favor of overhaul.
The city has already apologized for implementing the program this year after tens of thousands of homes were wrongly declared empty. Many residents said they did not understand that the city required them to make a statement every year, while others said they were billed even after making the statement.
Cllr York South Weston. Frances Nunziata said the situation should never have reached this point. “We screwed up,” he said. “That’s the bottom line; I think we should have paused the program when we realized there was a problem.”
Staff have admitted that there were fundamental problems with the design of the program itself, which prevented countermeasures when problems began to emerge, particularly red flags with a dramatic increase in empty homes in the program’s second year after only around 11,000 homes had been sold. considered empty. last year.
“It shouldn’t have been sent out to 167,000 people,” said the city’s chief financial officer, Stephen Conforti.
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He said that the way the empty home tax (VHT) was designed required a bill to be published by the end of March if someone had not made a declaration.
“That is a complete flaw in the program’s design. We need discretion to stop issuing those bills if we don’t hit a statement target,” Conforti said.
Other councillors, such as Paula Fletcher, questioned why residents were not given a confirmation number when they filled out a statement. Fletcher said when someone pays a parking ticket, they get a record to prove they paid their bill and it’s amazing that one feature wasn’t included in someone’s biggest piece of equity.
The communications regarding the introduction of the VHT have also been questioned. Account. James Pasternak questioned staff as to why last year’s bright yellow form highlighting the need to make a statement was omitted for a plain white notice, which he said could easily be missed.
The Council ultimately voted in favor of a complete overhaul of the programme, with staff reporting back later in the year to detail their progress.
While she disagreed with some councilors who said the VHT is a program beyond redemption, Nunziata said it’s better for the city to be sure there are no issues before moving forward in the upcoming tax season.
“If we feel at that time that it is still not (ready), the program is not properly established, then yes, we should put a pause on it,” he said. “I don’t think we should be sending out any bills, tax bills or late fees, unless we know it’s correct.”
Meanwhile, the quest for accountability looms large. On Wednesday, Mayor Olivia Chow said the person who designed the program was no longer with the city. The city manager at the council said no one was fired over the introduction of the VHT, but further questions about whether any staff were disciplined were shut down due to human resources rules.
That did not satisfy Cllr. Brad Bradford, who insisted that the money should stop with Chow.
“When you’re mayor, you’re running this ship and you need to take the time and invest the energy and have those meetings to make sure the civil service is implementing the direction of the council in line with that,” he said.
Chow countered that he only came into office in July 2023, which, he said, was after the wheels of the VHT were already in motion. If the problems repeat themselves next year, he said it will be a completely different matter.
“If it doesn’t have a common sense approach, if it’s poorly communicated, the program design is flawed, then I will take full responsibility,” Chow said.
& copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
