Councilor Diane Brennan - Taxpayer Fatigue?

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Claims No 'Taxpayer Fatigue'

Uses Ipsos Reid Survey As Proof

At the recent electronic (waste of tax dollars) town hall meeting Councillor Brennan made the statement she did not believe that taxpayer fatigue exists in Nanaimo. In fact she challenged the notion at all.

She made reference to the results of an Ispsos Reid survey pointing to general satisfaction among 90% of Nanaimo residents.

Really? I wonder if Councillor Brennan actually read the survey, or just cherry picked the results she likes?

This survey, Brennan uses to support the argument that taxpayer fatigue does not exist, clearly indicates that 50% of those responding to the survey she quotes would disagree with that statement.

On the page of the survey headed "Opinion regards paying increased taxes or seeing a reduction in services". This question produced the following response:

43% (of respondents) said to increase taxes (presumably fortunate enough to have a city job)

41% (of respondents) said to cut services, of the 41%, 26% said cut services to maintain current tax level, while 15% said to cut services to reduce taxes.

These results (which are likely weighted to an inflated positive response) clearly show that an equal number of respondents have no appetite for any more tax increases at all!

It is interesting to note that 15% of the respondents want taxes reduced, a percentage which is actually higher than the percentage of eligible votes any member on this council captured during the last civic election.

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Note: The results of this entire survey are suspect being based on the 4 - point scale used to frame the questions. This type of scale tends to lead to an inflated positive result producing what some survey companies describe as an 'impoverished and inaccurate data set'.