The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Mayor Dennis Ballard braced Flin Flonners for future tax hikes yesterday, telling a public forum that city council cannot keep property rates down indefinitely. At the Healthy Flin Flon forum at the Friendship Centre, Ballard said the municipal government has for years managed to keep tax increases modest while funding a number of deserving projects. "This council we have now has been very committed to holding the line on taxes, and we've done it well," he told the 20 people on hand. "I will say, and I've said it right along, this is not new news, that won't continue forever. It stands to reason that sooner or later, something's got to happen." Ballard touched on the difficulties council faces because of a shrinking tax base. Between 1996 and 2001, for instance, the population of Flin Flon went down by 572 residents ? nearly nine per cent. "When you have your tax base eroding at the rate that ours has been eroding," he said, "to where your population is about half [of its previous level], through downsizing at the Company or people moving to the lakes or whatever reason, that presents a whole bunch of challenges because right away, you want to keep up your community, but you have a lot less money to do it and the price of everything has just gone up." Flin Flon taxes have gone up a modest 13 per cent in the past 11 years and today remain in the middle compared to the rest of the province. ". . . I think at some point, you get to the point where you do have to spend," said the mayor. "From what I found out . . . you find that everybody wants every service known to mankind, but they don't want to pay for it. That's basically it. They don't want their taxes to go up, so I think you hit the point where eventually things get left and they have to be done." A particular area in need of work, in the mayor's view, is infrastructure, which he called "a real problem in this town." "That's not new, but it's becoming worse and it's scary at this point, so I think we're going to be focusing a lot on that," he said. "We have done a lot of work on the roads, regardless of what it might appear. If there's one complaint I get regularly, it's the roads, and I usually don't have much to say because I bump along them, too." Another concern relates to the future of the uptown area with the Flintoba Shopping Centre now competing for business. By allowing the new health care centre to be built in the former Community Hall parking lot, which some expect will increase traffic flow uptown, Ballard said the City has begun to address this issue. See 'Optimistic' P.# Con't from P.# "To me it was a no-brainer, it was a natural, for what we were looking for uptown," he said. "So I was amazed when this flood of criticism came to me, and I tell this story about having talked to a group of people who, one after another, told me they weren't happy about it, but in each case couldn't tell me why." Challenges aside, Ballard is optimistic about the future of Flin Flon. "My vision of this community down the road, I see us as a hub of the North, a trade centre for further north or around the area, and a recreation centre," he said, "where people would come to town . . . and spend a weekend and shop and swim and golf or whatever you like to do." The mayor shared his recipe for a vibrant, viable town, saying four factors are necessary: economic activity, community health, recreational opportunities and safety. "Based on that, I think the future looks pretty bright," he said. "I think we're doing pretty good and I don't think we're done."5/10/04
