The Miller Pout
Mayor David Miller is pouting. He spends over a million on a theatre for a company that isn’t attracting patrons and votes for a green plan for the city, but thinks we don’t have money for essential services that help the environment.
Interesting how he doesn’t go after the rich, but the little people who have no alternative. He isn’t going to sacrifice any of his sacred cows to help our city — facing down the unions, contracting out, selling off or leasing redundant municipal buildings, privatizing subway expansion, lobbying the senior governments. Instead, he’s going to get our money from our near-empty wallets by hook or by crook.
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Umm, he went after the rich with the land transfer taxes and the vehicle registration fees, and council said no. I think he needs to make some cuts (council perks, office renovation) *and* council needs to suck it up and vote in the new taxes. The city will go bankrupt next year, or they will need to cut even deeper. Miller’s been pretending the problem didn’t exist, but now everyone else is pretending it too. Scary.
The land transfer tax isn’t just for the rich, you know. Poor people own houses too, either because they bought it before they fell into financial difficulties or because they’re seniors. And if they can’t sell their houses because of the tax, then they might end up in worse financial straits.
People on tight budgets sometimes need a car to get to work, and usually their cars are very old. They too would still need to pay that vehicle tax, and when money is tight, every buck counts!
Council does NOT need to vote in the new taxes. Council needs to get aggressive and go after the provincial and federal governments to pay out their fair share.
The province in its last budget alleviated the 905 area but NOT the 416. This has to be rectified.
The federal government, with our tax dollars I might add, provide Quebec with enough money that that province supports the Montreal transit system to the extent that that smaller city has a bigger subway system than we do. Vancouver is also a heck of a lot better off than we are. Meanwhile, no government has reversed the damage Premier Harris did when he stopped the traditional provincial funding of the TTC. (See my post comparing how OTHER senior governments support cities’ transit systems: http://pario.blogspot.com/2006/02/lets-compare-ttc-to-canadian-and.html).
I got an e-mail from my councillor, who requested that we ask every provincial politician knocking on our doors, “Where’s Toronto’s fair share.” This is a good start. Now they have to stop slashing and start emulating Mel Lastman in non-stop front-page protests because only in-your-face action is going to get our tax money back. (Toronto pays out billions more in taxes than it receives in spending.) Plus they need to up their credibility factor by showing they’re prepared to challenge their sacred cows of personal perks, privatizing, and garbage handling, among others.
“…if they can’t sell their houses because of the tax…”
You make it sound as though the land-transfer tax exceeds the value of the property!
As for saving money through contracting out public services to private operators, hasn’t the “street furniture” business demonstrated that the City isn’t smart enough to do that effectively?
No, just that the tax will slow down real estate sales. And if the unlucky sod happens to live on the perimeter of Toronto, well, it’ll be awhile.
I understand Etobicoke managed privatization well pre-amalgamation. Aren’t there some of the same councillors from that era on the current Council? Could they not manage to lead in that respect? If we don’t demand more from our Councillors, we’ll continue to get the same old garbage.
It’s only going to slow down sales if it makes sellers not want to sell. If I’m willing to pay you $260,000 for your house, I’m willing to pay you $260,000 for your house. The question is whether you’re willing to eat another couple of percent in transaction costs — you’re not trapped.