The Star's Ian Urquhart muses about planned discussions between Mayor Miller and the Premier McGuinty about a 'new deal' for Toronto:
Urquhart column - Oct 3 2005
Urquhart's money seems to be on the allowance of some GTA-wide tax provision to help "poor" old Toronto. [Yep - the Toronto that receives almost $200 million in transfers from the other parts of the GTA, the lion's share of the gas tax allocated to municipalities, supersized business taxes..]
Here's a new deal for you my suburban friends - you get to pay higher taxes to help bail out Toronto - a city that hasn't even tried to stop its runaway spending express train. And guess what, Mayor Miller and his tax and spend loving leftist council will get to raise this tax over and over again. Run for your lives or at least hide your women and children.
1 comment:
Civility appears to have taken a vacation. Toronto, being the heart of the GTA Metropolis has a natural advantage over suburban areas in being able to fund itself from a property tax base:
- the most valuable land is near the center
- there is more dense development
Properly managed, Toronto should need no transfers from outlying areas. If you read Gotham - a Pulitzer prize winning history of NYC - you will notice that it was Brooklyn that wanted to join up with the original NY (Manhattan) because the latter had the leverage afforded by the greater density and valuations.
Toronto has turned logic on its head by managing to make the suburbs the cash cows.
Well - one can always run away from situations - if so, there wouldn't be much political discourse.
I'm not frustrated at all. I've had personal thank-you letters from provincial cabinet ministers thanking me for analyses I forwarded them on City of Toronto benchmarks vs other major cities.
It looks like the new City of Toronto Act will be very light on new tax sources. Mayor Miller has already acknowledged that it will not cure the city's financial crunch. This could mean that this will mean the beginning of the end of the policy of profligacy.
PS - I'm not sure where they are from, but there sure seemed to be more than a couple of street kids in Downtown Barrie last time I was there.
Post a Comment