May 7, 2012Dear Sir,There are times when people make public statements and are perhaps unaware they are untrue. Graeme Outerbridge’s statement that the Corporation spent $500,000 on resisting the move to allow “residents to vote for the first time” is manifestly untrue — and he knows it.Mr Outerbridge is aware that the Corporation actively moved to extend the franchise to all residents of the City. They went so far as to redraft amendments to include this clause long before Government did so.The truth is the Corporation spent $500,000 to argue the case that the franchise should be extended without disenfranchising hundreds of City taxpayers. There is an old phrase “No taxation without representation” and that is what the Corporation was fighting for.We now have a situation where those who pay over 95 percent of City taxes are denied the right to vote, period. They have no say in how the City is governed.Prior to the change in legislation, if you owned a business and rented property in the City, making you a City taxpayer, then you had a vote. If you rented an apartment or house in the City you had a vote. If you owned a piece of property in the City and had to pay City taxes, you had a vote.It mattered not if that piece of property was the Bank of Bermuda or a small house in North Hamilton. The owner had one vote. In fact that is not quite true. The Bank of Bermuda had one vote, but if a husband and wife jointly owned their house in North Hamilton they would each have a vote.Just to be clear, if HSBC owned five buildings in the City it did not get five votes. It had one vote. The BIU owns its own building together with other buildings with apartments but the BIU would have exactly the same voting rights as HSBC — one vote.And if the BIU rented out a dozen apartments to individuals, each individual already had the right to register and vote. (It was this section of the legislation that was outdated and needed amendment so that all City residents had the right to vote, not just one person from each apartment.)In the case of business owners (not property owners), all businesses were and are required to pay City taxes. If you owned a large business on Front Street you had exactly the same voting rights as the owner of a boutique on Court Street. Again, using the BIU as an example, if the Union rented out part of its main building to other businesses, such as the Liberty Theatre and to Hott 107.5, and those businesses were paying taxes, they would have a right to one vote. Now the BIU and hundreds of other City taxpayers have no vote.There are more small shop owners than there are large business owners but all, regardless of size or wealth, have been totally disenfranchised despite still being required to pay far more in taxes that any resident.No matter which way Graeme Outerbridge paints it the Corporation of Hamilton was NOT arguing to reduce or limit the franchise as he suggests. It was fighting to allow City tax payers to vote on how their taxes should be spent while at the same time making sure that all residents would be entitled to vote.TELL IT LIKE IT ISSmith’s