Dear Editor,

We in Oshawa should be aware that we are winners too. Oshawa has a great record in some important areas. Take municipal taxes as an example.
Our residential tax rate takes the gold at 1.76 per cent, more than double Toronto's pathetic 0.85 per cent, and well above the 1.19 per cent average.
This stellar performance is topped by the golden apartment rate of 3.06 per cent, three times the anemic 1.01 per cent of Markham, struggling at the bottom.
Oshawa falters a bit with the commercial rate, which only gets the silver at 3.57 per cent, while Toronto has the gold with 3.85 per cent. 
There is hope, however. 
Toronto is shifting tax slowly from the commercial sector to try to drag their residential rate from the dumpster so that soon Oshawa will be able to claim the gold there also.
The industrial rate gold goes to Oshawa with 5.34 per cent, more than double the loser, Markham, with 2.59 per cent.
So, with a clean sweep in sight, what is next?  Oshawa's year-over-year tax increases used to be winners, with 9.8 per cent in 2004, but they have sunk to a mere 4.61 per cent in 2008. 
If Oshawa council can hunker down and give 110 per cent perhaps we can help Ontario to overtake Quebec in the race to charge the highest proportion of family pre-tax income to property taxes. Quebec claims 3.4 per cent, topping Ontario's 3.2 per cent.  Solid performances when compared to Newfoundland/Labrador's 1.4 per cent, and the national average of 2.9 per cent.
We should honour Oshawa councillors for this sterling performance and encourage them to strive for greater things yet. Is there a Nobel Prize for reckless incompetence? 
Perhaps not, but if we want to continue our winning ways who better to do it than the councillors who made it happen?
We can't say that this success is due to inflation. Statscan reports that the Consumer Price Index, including energy and food, is fairly constant at about two per cent. No excuse there.
PS:  I am thinking about a competition for Oshawa taxpayers. Revise the Oshawa slogan, ‘Prepare to be Amazed.’  
Revise it as follows: ‘Prepare to be...............’ Fill in the blank space.

Alan Slater