The manner in which our municipal government levies and collects tax is becoming increasingly detached from its responsibility to deliver service and allocate collections among the citizenry in an equitable fashion.

Right now the City seems to charge property tax in a way that bears little resemblance to the amount of services consumed by the owners.  For example, if you own a high value property, you will undoubtedly pay a high tax, but perhaps you don't own a car or have children attending school.  In this case you'd pay a lot of tax relative to the amount of service needed.  In another case, perhaps a person rents a house, has five school aged kids, and makes dozens of daily trips up and down the most congested freeway at rush hour.  This person is arguably not even paying property tax directly, yet places a heavy load on municipal services.  And of course it goes without saying how much higher inner city taxes are for comparatively tiny homes vs. suburban palaces.

I would argue how property tax is charged significantly distorts behaviour in the City by encouraging undesirable behaviour such as peak time traffic congestion, and migration of young families to outer communities that lack public amenities such as schools and public transit options.  Lower value properties are obviously going to be preferentially selected by a buyer who will also benefit from lower tax.  Since road use isn't charged via a toll, a house shopper may significantly alter his or her behaviour to avoid tax, yet via the locational handicaps of outer communities, may require a lot of public investment in infrastructure.

Essentially I think that taxing based purely on assessed value rather than adjusting the tax for locational and behavioural patterns is subsidizing unwanted behaviour and punishing desirable behaviour.  

We may be better off by lowering property tax to some basic minimum, then charging usage based fees to ensure Calgarians are paying a more equitable share of how they use public services and infrastructure.

The likelihood of this happening, despite Maxime Bernier winning the Calgary vote for the recent leadership campaign (by a landslide over the other candidates) of the conservative party is really remote.  Until then, we will continue to use property tax as a blunt instrument to deal with the complex issue of financing the City.