(Following from Feb/27/2008 City of Greater Sudbury News Release)
In March 2006, the City of Greater Sudbury set up a ten-member Advisory Panel on Municipal Mining Revenues chaired by former Inco vice-president José Blanco. The resulting 64-page report, released in February, 2008, called on Council to, ‘invite the Province of Ontario to enter into negotiations with the city to establish a resource revenue-sharing framework that will ensure a predictable and sustainable revenue stream for the municipality.”
The panel notes that in 1970, major mining companies accounted for about a quarter of local property taxes. By 2005, the mining companies’ share of municipal property tax levies had fallen to just 6.5 per cent.
‘This is a very complex, multi-layered story in which there are no bad guys,” said panel chair José Blanco.