Many within the community have experienced frustration when dealing with Napanee town hall. In fact, it is not uncommon to hear about people having to wait weeks, months and even years just to get the simplest of things done.
So why is the service so bad? The answer is simple, the poor service is the result of the town’s fixation on bringing in more user fees, and the amount of effort needed to create, administer and collect them.
How bad is this problem? During the 2022, fiscal year, Greater Napanee collected almost $13 million in property taxes and just over $10.3 million in user fees. These user fees were up by over a million dollars from 2021, while tax revenue increased by just $229.272.00. Although, the town’s financial statements for 2024 are not yet available, we do know that the town has imposed at least two additional property tax increases, a special tax levy and a plethora of other new user fees, along with large increases to many of the existing ones over the previous two years.
The problem for the town is that collecting that additional 10.3 million dollars takes up a lot of staff time and resources that should be put towards providing service to taxpayers.
Sadly, the introduction of so many new user fees has started changing the nature of Napanee’s municipal governance process. This is because the town now uses the money it collects from property taxes to finance its new business, which is focused on selling services back to the people that initially paid for them.
As the town’s primary mandate is to make money from its user fees, it no longer has the time or resources to waste servicing taxpayers.
Tony Balasevicius
Napanee