Farm taxes under county review
By Richard Blanchard

A proposal to end the practice of subsidizing taxes on agricultural land and treating all assessed property the same has been deferred by Simcoe county council.

The proposal made by Essa township mayor Dave Guergis would end the automatic practice which sees agricultural taxes pay only one-quarter of the taxes on their assessed value.

Guergis told county councillors last week that the move to equity among all property classes would reduce taxes on industrial and commercial properties in the county. The change would see a decrease of less than one per cent on residential properties and also reduce taxes on multipleresidential properties such as apartments.

"I think that it would encourage business and industry to move to this county," he said.

The Essa mayor said that the present system which was downloaded to the municipalities is deeply flawed.

"In my township, we have Asian investors buying up farmland for future development and the municipality is subsidizing their taxes. And we see prohibitive rates which discourages industrial and commercial development," he said.

But the few farmers sitting on county council said that the move to full value taxation on farmland would prove disastrous to farmers in the county.

"It makes the little hair on my head stand up," said Adjala-Tosorontio mayor Tom Walsh who is a dairy farmer.

Clearview mayor Ken Ferguson, who also farms, saw the move to end reduced taxation as a last stand for the agricultural industry in the county.

"The present system worked for the good of farmers. Let us help those who are true farmers," he said.

Guergis said that the proposal to move to treating all assessment properties the same should not be seen as an attack on farmers.

"I have no problems with some sort of system which helps out true farmers but we have to look at who is being subsidized. Let's not be subsidizing developers. Its a terrible system and we should try and do something now."

County council agreed to defer the proposal and sent the report to staff for review.