City staff should not have mailed vacant home tax bills to more than 160,000 residents knowing most were in error, some city council members said Thursday as they voted to fix — rather than scrap — the “deeply flawed” collection process.
“This was a huge mistake that we made,” Coun. Frances Nunziata said at council on Thursday of the multithousand-dollar bills that terrified many residents unaware they must declare their home occupied every year — plus some who declared their homes occupied but were still mailed huge tax bills.
Earlier this month, after bills were mailed out, councillors were besieged by panicked homeowners who also crashed the 311 help line. Some were crying as they sought help to lodge an online complaint and get the bill reversed, said councillors who described the collection process as a “nightmare,” a “debacle” and a “disaster” in need of a complete overhaul.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
“How could anyone justify pressing the ‘send’ button on 165,000 bills?” Mayor Olivia Chow asked council colleagues after Stephen Conforti, the city’s chief financial officer, conceded the process was poorly designed and noted red flags before the bills were sent, including the fact that city staff estimate about 11,000 homes were vacant last year but more than 160,000 people had failed to declare occupancy this year, triggering automatic collection efforts.
“This program was designed in a way that was just flawed,” Chow said. “It caused grief and anxiety and it should not have happened ... We’re cleaning up the mess.”
Other council members agreed that city staff should have hit pause on the billing, and should have built a system that sends confirmatory emails when residents declare their property occupied or vacant. They also said the city needs a better public awareness campaign, and should look at overcoming privacy concerns around letting residents avoid annual occupancy declarations by consenting to the city looking at their utility bills.
Council voted to scrap late fees charged to people who got the bills, and to declare everyone whose home was declared occupied for 2022 to automatically get the same status for 2023 and the cancellation of their latest bill, even if they haven’t appealed it. Owners of homes not subject to the tax but who paid anyway can opt for an immediate refund or a credit on their future bills.
Council voted 23-1 to direct staff to address the many problems in a complete revamp, with only Coun. Vince Crisanti opposing. He failed, in a 5-18 vote, to convince colleagues to completely scrap the tax, which was first levied last year and based on similar measures in cities including Vancouver.
Chow argued that the vacant home tax is one of many tools needed to ensure desperately needed housing is being used and not sitting empty awaiting higher sale prices or redevelopment.
“The purpose of this whole program is to push the speculators or foreign owners to make a decision — are they going to leave these units vacant in the middle of a housing crisis?” Chow told reporters. “That’s not acceptable.”
David Rider
is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city
hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider.
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