Feeling poorer after checking your accounts online? Wondering how the five dog grooming businesses in your neighbourhood will fare during the recession? Well, here’s something else that will make you an adherent of the new austerity: the updated property assessments for 2008 will be mailed to old City of Toronto addresses the week of October 20.

Those assessments are based on prices in January 2008 — just off a few months from the peak of the now-declining housing market. Assessments have been frozen since 2005; any increases in property tax have been due to increases in the city’s mill rate.