• City laments its 180% rent award [ Toronto Star ]
• Pool debate treads water [ Toronto Star ]
• No funds for pools, city budget chief says [ Globe and Mail ]
• Frustrated Torontonians coping with snow aftermath [ CBC.ca ]
• Bleak news for lane users: the calvary isn’t coming [ Toronto Star ]
• Those banks you see on Bay street today are snowbanks [ National Post ]
• Community, builder quarrel over condo [ Toronto Star ]
• City councillors abusing free parking, Ford says [ Globe and Mail ]
• Deal reached on transit funding [ Globe and Mail ]
• ‘Dramatic’ boost for TTC [ Toronto Sun ]
• TTC to announce better bus, streetcar service [ National Post ]
Thursday’s headlines
Read more articles by Monika Warzecha
4 comments
Community, builder quarrel over condo.
I think that this encapsulates some very fundamental problems for the city. The zoning has been in place for years yet the office towers never got built. You can hardly blame the developers as they are sure to loose money if they went ahead with offices. As the Hemson proforma data shows, Toronto taxes make it near impossible to build commercial space profitably.
One would think that being on a subway line, in the ‘heart’ of a satellite downtown would be very enticing for office development. But as history has shown Toronto tax climate towards non residential property will continue to erode this market. What is interesting to note about this is that this is happening in spite of Toronto’s plans to ‘improve’ the tax climate. It should serve as a wake up call for the city.
Look, the city announced that it will provide tax breaks for business. So, let’s get on with these new measures, because there are many major firms building offices outside of the city.
Since this a fairly new measure, I don’t think we can call this condo proposal a sign of the failure of the measure.
While addressing serious bus problems, how about looking at the 51 North bus from Leslie.
Every single evening in “rush hour” (i.e. 5 pm –)
a bus is routinely taken off or ‘disappears’..
in temps -15, -10 like these days, we are there for 45 minutes waiting for a bus to show.. when they do, oftentimes they say sorry short turn’.. we are then put off at Finch where we are required to wait in freezing snow, rain, cold until hopefully the other bus ‘noone knows where it was’ – will mercifully and kindly rescue us…TTC should be required to look into this dreadful situation. I have seen mothers with babies literally freezing..!!! and this is Canada in the 21st century?
A.R.,
How can it not be a sign of failure. The fact that the Toronto’s ETBC program has been in place since 2005 and updated in 2007 yet is still not enticing enough spells problems. The developers are aware of the current and future tax climate and are not persuaded.
I really have to wonder at the level of competence of city staff. Councillors would have been much wiser to ignore the staff recommendation that formed the policy and adopted the public ones. The revisiting of the issue at council in 2007 moved a step closer to the public recommendations, but not fully. As I have shown on my blog, and within the city’s own reports, higher taxes in Toronto do not produce real extra revenue for the city. They merely get capitalized into assessment values and depreciate asset values. I urge you to take a look the samples I have on my blog and those in the Hemson reports (linked on my blog). Despite the cites higher rates the difference in tax revenue is negligible.
The sample at the bottom is particularly interesting. Using standard valuation formulas, if both were in the same tax duristriction the one on Canartic Dr. would be worth considerably more. Yet because it is 6 km away and in Toronto it is worth 2 million less.