{"id":2347,"date":"2007-10-02T16:57:14","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T20:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:18:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:18:40","slug":"tide-turning-on-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Tide turning on taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1168\/1428906413_ae58886e0c.jpg?v=0\" style=\"width: 500px; height: 335px\" height=\"335\" width=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The tide is finally turning in favour of increased municipal taxes.<\/p>\n<p>The litmus test came last night at a community meeting in the heart of Etobicoke, organized by centre-right councillor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toronto.ca\/councillors\/milczyn1.htm\">Peter Milczyn,<\/a> and attended by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toronto.ca\/mayor_miller\/multimedia\/welcome.htm\">Mayor David Miller<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One after another, 20-odd speakers came to the microphone to confront their mayor. The crowd, overwhelmingly populated by seniors, had a litany of grievances to file with His Worship but at the end of their list, most speakers concluded that they would be willing to pay a little more to their local government.<\/p>\n<p>I did a double take the first time a resident acknowledged that paying more in taxes, while undesirable, is a necessity. Then it happened again and again and again. By the end of the evening, those who insisted that significantly increased taxes aren&#8217;t part of the solution to the City&#8217;s financial problem were in the minority. And when Miller scrummed with a few members of the media after the event had finished, <a href=\"http:\/\/toronto.ctv.ca\/servlet\/an\/local\/CTVShows\/20051003\/newbios_chris_eby\/20051003?site_codename=toronto\">Chris Eby<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/toronto.ctv.ca\/tl\/static\/aboutus.html\">CFTO<\/a> started off his questions in a surprised tone with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That seemed to go well, didn&#8217;t it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Just four months ago, the outrage expressed by Torontonians was unmistakeable. When one of the few real residents who attended the June tax consultations stood up in Scarborough and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You&#8217;ll raise taxes over my dead body,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he sounded dead serious.<\/p>\n<p>However, last night the room had a distinctly different mood. It could have been that residents felt they were finally getting answers from their passionate &#8212; at times even feisty &#8212; mayor. (Plus, it helped that the special interests didn&#8217;t grandstand, as they had at the consultations.)<\/p>\n<p>One man stepped up to the podium to say that earlier in the day he had written a letter to the Mayor with 10 reasons not to implement the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toronto.ca\/finance\/revenue_tools.htm\">Land Transfer Tax<\/a> (LTT). But after listening to Miller&#8217;s answers to the questions before his, the gentleman&#8217;s list was down to just three when he spoke. And when the Mayor had finished responding to the life-long Etobicoke resident&#8217;s speech, the elderly man had but one of his 10 points standing &#8212; cut snow shovelling because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can do it myself\u00e2\u20ac\u009d &#8212; and was ready to accept paying a bit more to the City&#8217;s coffers.<\/p>\n<p>But while residents were willing to accept a tax increase, many said that they would prefer a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/article\/258966\">significant property tax hike<\/a> instead of a municipal LTT. However, my sense after talking to literally hundreds of residents in one-on-one conversations over the weekend is that the aversion to LTT isn&#8217;t based on an informed opinion, it&#8217;s more out of not wanting a tax they don&#8217;t understand (though there were certainly a few who were informed and simply didn&#8217;t like the LTT.)<\/p>\n<p>So with three weeks to go before the vote at City Council, Miller is starting peak at the right time. Now he needs to continue to go out to neighbourhoods across the city and not just listen to residents and clarify the City&#8217;s record; he also needs to educate the citizenry on what he&#8217;s asking of us.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo courtesy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mutephotoblog\/\">Mute*&#8217;s<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tide is finally turning in favour of increased municipal taxes. The litmus test came last night at a community meeting in the heart of Etobicoke, organized by centre-right councillor Peter Milczyn, and attended by Mayor David Miller. One after another, 20-odd speakers came to the microphone to confront their mayor. The crowd, overwhelmingly populated<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Tide turning on taxes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6882,6881,756,408,425,426,3277,89,46,19],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-centre-right-councillor","tag-chris-eby","tag-city-council","tag-councillor","tag-david-miller","tag-mayor","tag-peter-milczyn","tag-scarborough","tag-taxes","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tide turning on taxes - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tide turning on taxes - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The tide is finally turning in favour of increased municipal taxes. The litmus test came last night at a community meeting in the heart of Etobicoke, organized by centre-right councillor Peter Milczyn, and attended by Mayor David Miller. One after another, 20-odd speakers came to the microphone to confront their mayor. The crowd, overwhelmingly populatedContinue reading &quot;Tide turning on taxes&quot;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-02T20:57:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-01-21T20:18:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1168\/1428906413_ae58886e0c.jpg?v=0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Spacing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Spacing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/\",\"name\":\"Tide turning on taxes - Spacing Toronto\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1168\/1428906413_ae58886e0c.jpg?v=0\",\"datePublished\":\"2007-10-02T20:57:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-01-21T20:18:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/da656cba8e02a7aabb6c80c549dc7e72\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1168\/1428906413_ae58886e0c.jpg?v=0\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1168\/1428906413_ae58886e0c.jpg?v=0\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Tide turning on taxes\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/\",\"name\":\"Spacing Toronto\",\"description\":\"Canadian Urbanism Uncovered  |  Toronto Architecture, Urban Design, Public Transit, City Hall, Parks, Walking, Bikes, Streetscape, History, Waterfront, Maps, Public Spaces\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/da656cba8e02a7aabb6c80c549dc7e72\",\"name\":\"Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/73c02741f456d391a6979ebe8b8a600f?s=96&d=blank&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/73c02741f456d391a6979ebe8b8a600f?s=96&d=blank&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/wire\/?author=37\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/author\/adam\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tide turning on taxes - Spacing Toronto","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/10\/02\/tide-turning-on-taxes\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Tide turning on taxes - Spacing Toronto","og_description":"The tide is finally turning in favour of increased municipal taxes. 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