Examining The Tax Policies In Oxford County

Thursday, 27 June 2019 08:07

A new Tax Ratio Review Ad Hoc Committee was created during an Oxford County council meeting. It will look over the County's current tax policies to ensure they are meeting the needs of the municipalities in Oxford.

OXFORD COUNTY - A new Ad Hoc Committee was formed to review Oxford County's tax ratio.

A councillor on the Striking Committee recommended a committee be appointed, to look over the current tax policies and ensure it is meeting the needs of Oxford's municipalities.

Warden Larry Martin says the idea will be for the committee to come up with a solution that will benefit everyone.

"For the last, I'm going to say three years, possibly, since the reevaluation of the land we've always had very heated, lengthy discussions with regards to the tax ratios at budget time, and at this point in time one of the councillors made the fact that why don't we setup a committee to look at this. And we'll go through the whole thing and look at the impacts on all tax classes and bring back a report to council, and the staff is going to work with them as well to bring back that report, so hopefully we can get this behind us and move forward and establish a ratio that's acceptable to everybody and we can cut two or three meetings out of our budget meetings."

The Ad Hoc Committee will be made up of four County councillors, including the Mayor of Zorra Township Marcus Ryan and the Mayor of Tillsonburg Stephen Molnar.

Warden Martin says he expects they'll review a few topics.

"I think what they're going to look at, I'm leaving that up to them, but I assume what they'll look at is the services rendered for tax dollars paid and whether the one section is paying more than their fair share, if one should be raised, one should be lowered. And once they have a look at all the services that are provided by everybody and the ones that everybody uses, then they can maybe come to a firm understanding as to what would be fair."

The Mayor of Ingersoll Ted Comiskey and the Mayor of South-West Oxford David Mayberry make up the rest of the committee, which consists of two urban and two rural. Warden Martin says it's so both sides are represented in the discussions.

He says a meeting involving the committee will be held in the near future.