Search Results for: Fiscal Health

User fees are one of the principal funding mechanisms for a range of municipal services, from water and waste management to transit and recreation. New IMFG paper explains why user fees are a good source of revenue for municipalities, how they are employed in Ontario, and how to navigate the trade-off between efficiency and fairness.
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Over the past decade, most major cities have received some new revenue sources. Yet, little is known about how cities actually use them or how they have benefitted. This paper reviews data from the municipal financial statements of the largest city in each province to investigate how Canadian cities are employing their revenue sources and whether more sources lead to more revenues and better services in cities.
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In this video, Toronto’s City Manager Chris Murray shares his thoughts on the learnings of the COVID-19 crisis and what he sees as the way forward.
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Many Canadian municipalities have taken hits to their budgets due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But what has the effect been on municipalities around the world? Have municipalities in different countries fared better than others? What accounts for any differences? What needs to be done to ensure municipalities bounce back?
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In this video, a panel examines the continued impact of COVID-19 on municipal finance. How are municipalities preparing for their 2021 budgets? What impacts are they anticipating from COVID-19? What steps are needed at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels to safeguard the fiscal health of municipalities?
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In an effort to provide financial relief to citizens and local businesses in response to the COVID-19 crisis, some Canadian municipalities are introducing or expanding property tax deferral programs. Designing Property Tax Deferrals answers 10 questions that municipalities should consider when designing property tax deferral programs, highlighting some considerations and implications.
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This collection of papers by leading experts, emerging scholars, and policy makers in the field of municipal taxation and finance sets out the financial challenges facing municipalities in Canada today and examines various practical means of navigating these challenges.
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Whether institutional constraints are desirable is a debate that may alternatively be framed as one over the merits of local government autonomy. This paper contributes to this debate by empirically analysing the effects of local government autonomy on several outcomes, including the size of government, the ownsource revenue mix, and fiscal sustainability.
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