Dear Editor
Re: Ashcroft Adopts Tax Hike (17 May 2011)
While I am not a business owner in Ashcroft, I do work for a local
business, and am aware of how the 22% tax increase will impact the
bottom line of every business in the village. I think that treasurer
Natalie Aalderink is being somewhat disingenuous when she notes that
while business owners aren’t eligible for the home owners grant, “many
Ashcroft business assessments were lower this year”. This is all very
well as far as it goes; but unless the assessments are substantially
lower than they were last year, businesses are still taking a hit,
facing a 22 per cent tax hike on their assessed value.
Rather than blame the council of the 1990s for the current state of
affairs (and really, two decades seems to be stretching the time- honoured
government fallback of “blame a past administration for this
mess” to the breaking point), perhaps it would be salutary for the
current council to look back at the 1990s through different lenses. In
the 1990s, Ashcroft had two large grocery stores; three hardware
stores; a full service Radio Shack outlet; a business that sold and
serviced bicycles; a pool/billiards hall; a business that sold and
serviced computers; a full-service print/copy shop; a large hobby/ crafts
store; a store that sold paintings, artwork, and did custom
framing; a full-service florist shop; a large, dedicated video/DVD
rental shop; a laundromat; an Internet café; a U-Brew outlet; and the
various shops that were in the Bailey Building before it burned down
in 2001 (which included, at that time, the Secret Garden restaurant, a
clothing store, a shoe store, and a small food outlet). I may well be
forgetting a handful of businesses (I moved here in 1997), and can’t
recall when the clothing stores owned by Fran Helland and Laurie
Webster closed their doors, although I recall both from my earlier
visits here (which began in 1971).
Look again at that list of businesses above. We now have one large
grocery store, and one hardware store, which has absorbed Radio Shack
(now called The Source). The Dollar Store occupies part of the space
one of the hardware stores took up in the Village Mall; the rest of
the mall (apart from a beauty salon) stands empty. Another business
now occupies the site of the hobby/crafts store; but all those other
business have moved out and not been replaced, or been burned out and
the site not redeveloped. These were all standalone businesses, each
of which presumably paid taxes to the Village of Ashcroft, and in the
intervening years very little, if anything, seems to have been done to
attract new businesses in their place.
Common sense would seem to indicate that the best way to generate
taxes without causing further suffering to local business is to have a
broader base from which to draw those taxes. Perhaps, instead of
trying (unfairly) to blame the council of two decades ago, and causing
the few businesses in town that have managed to hang on for dear life
to tighten their belts even more, the Mayor and council could try to
be more proactive in attracting businesses to the Village, before it
becomes a ghost town.
Barbara Roden
Ashcroft