Tuesday’s headlines

11 comments

1. It’s a bad government habit to link revenue sources with spending, not only from a governance point of view, but from a political point of view as well. Marcus Gee asks why billboards should pay for art projects elsewhere in the city. But the question is, do billboards impose a cost on society that they should pay for? If you believe (as I do) that billboards are a form of visual pollution, then society has a right to ask for compensation. But this is a separate issue from what society should do with this money once it receives it.

   Similarly, when road tolls are proposed primarily as a way to pay for transit improvements, they are opposed by drivers as some sort of anti-car tax grab. But congestion fees should be about providing a service to drivers (access to a clear road), a pro-car measure! The fact that the revenues can be put towards transit is just a bonus. By de-linking the revenue and the spending, the measure would become more politically palatable.

2. I love how, in the “Yonge St. condo plans win fans” article, the spokesperson for the Bay Corridor Community Association riles against having, god forbid, 28 storey and 45 storey towers in the neighbourhood. Because, you know, you should never build anything over a subway line in the downtown core of Canada’s largest city that is larger than the biggest building, in, say, Gravenhurst. NIMBY! NIMBY!

   If the community group was opposing the design of the condo in how it met the street, or how the parking entry was placed, or some other legitimate detail, fine. But I truly hope that Toronto residents have gotten over their raw, nerve-tingling, all-encompassing fear of heights. It’s frankly embarrassing.

3. I’m with you, iSky. Who are these grounddwellers?

   Toronto still has too many people who think it should feel like a slightly larger Barrie.

   Thankfully though, it looks like that vision is dying out. Doesn’t Toronto already have the second most high rise buildings in North America, after New York? The city is going up whether the NIMBYs like it or not.

4. I read recently that Gord Perks is opposing the Giraffe condo development at Bloor & Dundas West, because it’s “too high” (they want 27 stories, he wants 12). Again, right on top of a transit hub.

5. I don’t like seening developers pushing bad projects on protesting neighbours, but in this case I’ve got to agree with SkyScraper. Yonge from Bloor right down to Queens Quay is the perfect place for high-rise development, provided that the heritage buildings along the street are preserved. And that’s exactly what this development will do.

   I find this opposition strange, since the average resident of the Bay Corridor Community IS a high-rise resident. Bay Street is solid condos from Bloor down to Dundas, with hardly a 3 story building to be seen.

6. “If the community group was opposing the design of the condo in how it met the street, or how the parking entry was placed, or some other legitimate detail, fine.”

   Except the community group couldn’t find one so they had to revert to a basic Down With This Sort Of Thing!

   Whether it be wind farms or any other kind of civic infrastructure these days, there seem to be a hardcore of folks now who will not be satisfied no matter what level of concession is offered.

7. All too often, the NIMBY label is tagged on a group BEFORE their concerns have been dealt with in an open and transparent manner. Whether the label gets used depends for the most part on whether one agrees or disagrees with the issue the group is bringing forth (eg. most people who post on this site wouldn’t think of the folks in Leslieville who fought the SmartCentre as NIMBYs.. but they certainly were). The bottom line is that we are all NIMBYs — we all have concerns/issues with respect to things going on where we live. Some of these concerns are legitimate, some of them are not. All of them deserve to be addressed in a public and transparent way, because if nothing else, those who have to live with the changes are often capable of seeing things in the planning that the so-called experts are not (something that Jane Jacobs stressed repeatedly in her writings). Yeah, I’m ticked off by some NIMBY groups.. But what really bugs me are the arrogant folks (Star’s Chris Hume would be a perfect example) who seem to think they can sort out the legitimate from the non-legitimate concerns before those concerns have even been addressed.

   Regarding condos, I don’t have a problem with them for the most part. But I have long agreed with Councillor Vaughn’s position that virtually all these developments are not conducive to family living. That is not good planning and will likely create huge problems as people move through different stages of their life cycle.

8. What? Nothing on the $640,000,000 renovation of Union Station?

9. The comments from Integrity Commissioner regarding CNE Hotel should be setting off warning bells about how narrow she is interpreting the mandate of the Integrity Office. If she is only going to reprimand a Public Official when she catches someone red handed she might as well just stay at home because that virtually never happens. In this case she should be reprimanding all parties for ignoring the fact that they created a strong appearance of potential conflict of interest that has discredited the process, proven misconduct or not.

10. @Paul – that sounds like a depressing situation. Dundas West has the subway, the streetcar and GO – just the place for a growth node.

    I have to agree with Dave McDonald re: the CNE. Those who decide on contracts should be separated from those that execute them. That is a separate issue from his contracting hobbyhorse. Also, if the Integrity Commissioner had no jurisdiction as she claimed, why pass comment on the merits of it?

11. Here’s the article about the Dundas/Bloor condo:
    http://www.mytowncrier.ca/condo-proposal-to-omb.html