The following letter to the editor appeared in the Georgetown, Ontario, Canada Independent and Free Press of yesterday, February 25, 2005:
Non-profit groups a tax burden
Dear editor,
I read with a degree of resignation that our council decided to raise our Land taxes about 4.6 per cent. I assume this adjustment is necessary, so be it!
What bothers me is the profusion in our community of the excess numbers of non-profit organizations who are tax-exempt. These organizations place an unfair burden on the rest of the community by causing us to carry the weight of lost taxes by their
exemption. Whether we belong to any of these groups or not, we are forced to take up the slack.
One of the largest non-contributors in our midst apparently, is a large complex in town, that prints and distributes religious propaganda, partially at our expense. I understand the operation is manned by volunteer workers, mostly from other communities, therefore very little is contributed to our community.
We also seem to be burdened with a profusion of religious, organized, non-profit churches, complexes, etc. which I am forced to subsidize, like it or not.
I am sure this will raise the ire of members of these organizations, but I believe there are many residents who do not realize they are subsidizing these groups and as such we are forced into paying higher taxes. How one controls the number of these organizations in the community, I do not know, but surely there should be some measure of control that does not create such an obvious and unfair imbalance.
William Pomeroy, Norval