June 12, 2001
Mr. Robert A. Richards
President and Chief Administrative Officer
Ontario Property Assessment Corporation
1305 Pickering Parkway
Pickering, Ontario L1V 3P2
Dear Mr. Richards:
I am very concerned about your changes to the Ontario Property
Assessment Corporation outlined in your letter of May 28, 2001. While
I acknowledge that a goal of improved service is always a worthy one,
your Futures Implementation plan, released May 24th, will
not result in better service to the public.
In effect, your plan to consolidate operations in the Toronto area
will provide less service to the very people you are mandated to
serve. By establishing a central call centre and downsizing community
offices eventually out of existence, your vision does a disservice to
citizens in all other parts of the province from Kenora to Windsor.
Ratepayers are already complaining that they have trouble getting
through to OPAC staff. With a centralized call centre they are less
likely to get someone who knows their local situation or can go beyond
a standard response.
What this plan has achieved to date is a massive destabilization of
your employees and their collective agreement through an unwise
centralization in the very personal business of property tax
assessment.
It puts many OPAC workers at risk of lower wages or no employment
at all. Among the 1,400 workers you surprised when ordering them to
reapply for their jobs (an undisclosed number of as-yet defined
positions) are many who are beset with uncertainty, worry and concern
over OPAC’s new direction.
Call centres are notorious for dragging down wages and benefits,
lowering levels of service and destroying continuity. Ultimately, this
plan is about cutting staff and cutting costs. Service to the general
public will suffer.
Before you take one of North America’s most respected assessment
organizations and impose severe limitations on its ability to
function, consider the consequences of throwing it into disarray:
- Loss of staff expertise, experience, continuity and
institutional knowledge
- Major reassessment due in 18 months
- Staff reductions – too few people to do a proper job
- Assessment services made more remote
- Call centre reputation with customers as ‘voice mail jail’
- Over reliance on technology at expense of human approach
With municipalities mandated by the province to pay for and provide
assessment services, your job is to ensure that OPAC responds with
measured changes that sacrifice neither public employees nor the
excellent service they provide to citizens across the province.
The Conservative government’s Beaubien Report has already
infringed on your agency’s arm’s length role by ordering OPAC to
allow golf course property owners in the Greater Toronto Area to pay
significantly less than the market value your assessors placed on
these lucrative lands.
It seems to me that a government that pushes tax breaks for wealthy
golf course owners while municipalities stagger under the weight of
added costs they pass on in higher taxes to property taxpayers is not
one we should be following.
Throwing a bunch of qualified people out of work and creating
upheaval in an assessment office that has worked reasonably well
overall is asking for trouble down the road.
I request that you work with your board and union to devise a
better plan that protects jobs and makes full use of staff’s skills
to provide better service to all your stakeholders. I would appreciate
your response to the points I’ve raised.
Yours truly,
(Original Signed by Mr. Hampton)
Howard Hampton, Leader
Ontario New Democratic Party
