It was a newspaper article about all the problems that the Distillery District developers are having with the city. Even Pam McConnell acknowledged that. The city keeps making financial demands ( basically extortion ) on the developers and if they refuse, they hold the project up with red tape.
The City does seem to be double-dipping on the Distillery projects.
You have to admit that Mayor Miller and many of the councillors, like Vaughan are very arrogant and self-absorbed. He's appointed ONLY left-wingers to his executive council and he's far too power-hungry and micro-manages everything HIS way only! In other words; A dictator. I find it off-putting. He doesn't listen to anyone else's opinion. I am also against those taxes he imposed.
Now I wouldn't mind it, if he acted more like that against the province and feds. He's always so polite and respectful to them; but arrogant to everyone else.
While there are no parties at City Hall per se, it is the mayor's prerogative to stack the committees with other councillors who see things his way. Why shouldn't he do that? What makes him the Mayor otherwise? If he has no more say than another councillor, then he's just a councillor. He won the vote as Mayor however, so he gets to try to steer the ship if he can. To do that you have to put people who agree with you in the places that affect the policy changes they want. If the people of the city don't like the direction or style taken, they can throw the Mayor and any councillors out come the next election.
That one councillor, I believe her name is Stintz, Is against every project.
Yeah, you've got Karen's number! In fact, that's why she's at City Hall - she ran on a platform opposing the Minto project at Yonge & Eg - and the voters there put her into that seat. While she has never forgotten where her bread is buttered, I wonder if the anti-development vote in that ward will be so strong during the next election now that Minto Midtown is nearly finished and no longer considered evil-incarnate. And while I do not mean to say that all other development applications are being welcomed these days (there's a very intrusive one northwest of Yonge & Eg working it's way through the system at the moment), people seem to be more accepting of the need to intensify the city now than they were back when Ms. Stintz was first elected.
I also believe that the city is taking advantage of developers with that article 37?? ( or whatever the name is ) They are abusing that privilege and those extra costs are passed on to the condo purchaser.
As stated earlier in this thread, the city is receiving a $ 4 Million ( donation )?? and a $ 1 Million square in exchange for 60 extra units! The city will be earning extra taxes from those 60 extra units, and those taxes are the only money they should be receiving. The city is just getting greedier and greedier.
Property taxes (and now a few other new, rather negligible taxes) keep City programs running. Programs like Police, the Fire Department, Libraries, the TTC, Parks and Rec, etc.
When new residents move in there is a need for the City to prepare properly for them. Section 37 provides some capital funds for new infrastructure in the area that new residents will be using. There is no reason not to pass those costs on to the condo purchaser.
If that is the case in today's economic turmoil, they won't have too many investors knocking on their door. They have pushed the film industry out of town. They blew the World's Fair application proposal when it was ours to win. They have taxed the industries to death where they have all moved to the 905. Personally, I think this crew at City Hall are a bunch of pussies with no direction. Everything the city touches turns to shit, I will hate to see the final product if ever build of Union Station, Nathan Phillips Square, West Donlands.
It will be scary if any of these look anything like the mediocre crap being controlled and built by them across the city.
To make your post easier to read, I fixed spelling, punctuation, capitalization, spacing, tenses, and with all that done, most of your accusations are still baseless raving. There's no point for me to take on any of your points because I don't think you've made a convincing case for any of them in the first place.
I have heard municipalities called many things, but greedy is a category that this city does not fall into.
The City is caught in bind. As the only level of government that doesn't rely on income and sales taxes which increase when the economy is good, they have to find revenue sources to pay for programs that have to expand in good economies. The TTC is a perfect example: more people are riding public transit, so more vehicles have to be put on the roads. Capital and running costs for buses, streetcars, subways, go up. Since only 80 something percent of the cost of each ride is covered by the fare (best cost recovery on the continent, by the way), the money to run those extra vehicles has to come from somewhere. The City is seen by some as greedy for having introduced some new taxes, but overall* I agree with Catcher: the City is just doing what it has too.
The city has every right to demand money or public amenities from the developers. For far too long, the developer has had an easy road in this city, as evidenced by numerous ugly buildings and overall a removal of public space in favour of private space.
To me, it's about time that the city and we as citizens start to reap some benefit from all this development (besides property taxes).
True dat.
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*I have some small quibbles with the way some programs are handled, but the percentage of the City's budget that would be effected were those programs to be run as I would prefer would be negligible in the greater scheme.
