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2014 Municipal Election: Toronto Mayoral Race

Southcore said:
Switching gears slightly, I have a question about the revenue tools for transit (apologies if this has been addressed already). Say an election is held tomorrow and the Liberals get a majority. They then increase HST by one per cent and increase a five cents on gas for the Big Move, both of which GTHA wide. Regardless of who is mayor on Oct 28, 2014 would such revenue tools still need to be approved by council for them to be put in place in Toronto?
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It doesn't matter when a Provincial election is called or which party wins it. The transit funding problem in Toronto can not depend on the whims of a Provincial legislature, it is not their problem it is ours.
There are only 2 sources of funding for new transit in Toronto or any other municipality.
One, raise property tax 10% and dedicate that money to capital costs ONLY.
Two, raise fares 10% across the board.
There is no free lunch.
 
city council would need to approve the acceptance of the grants for any projects they are to oversee, (subways) but that would pass council very quickly. Its like any provincial grant, Ford votes against it every once and a while but they always pass with flying colours as its "Free money"

as for suburban LRTs, those could move ahead without municipal approval if the province so wanted to. It'll wait for approval as that is the approach they are taking (thus the renegotiated all underground LRT from Ford), but it is possible. In general municipalities are the provinces b*tch, so they can do what ever the hell they want to if they really want to. generally however the province avoids doing things without city approval.
 
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js97 said:
She's absolutely a phony, extremely scripted and disingenuous. Did you see her interview at Real Sports after the gold medal game? Despite the fact that she's supporting a multi-billion dollar Corp that isn't even in her ward (Real Sports/MLSE), she talks about multiculturalism and diversity etc. It's the Gold Medal hockey game. It's bunch white, rural, middle class kids that made it big... Nothing diverse about it.
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Errrr I'm pretty sure Real Sports is in her riding
 
spider said:
It doesn't matter when a Provincial election is called or which party wins it. The transit funding problem in Toronto can not depend on the whims of a Provincial legislature, it is not their problem it is ours.
There are only 2 sources of funding for new transit in Toronto or any other municipality.
One, raise property tax 10% and dedicate that money to capital costs ONLY.
Two, raise fares 10% across the board.
There is no free lunch.
Click to expand...

This is kind of a ridiculous statement. Of course it is Ontario's problem. Transit planning is a regional issue. The bus, subway and commuter rail systems all extend beyond municipal boundaries and they definitely are used by more people than just Toronto residents. We cannot build a world class transit system on property tax and fares alone.
 
Silence&Motion said:
This is kind of a ridiculous statement. Of course it is Ontario's problem. Transit planning is a regional issue. The bus, subway and commuter rail systems all extend beyond municipal boundaries and they definitely are used by more people than just Toronto residents. We cannot build a world class transit system on property tax and fares alone.
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Remember with CoTA there are tax impementation measures available to Council if they want to take the heat
eg a Parking Tax...there is an estimated what 250K vehicles commuting to Toronto each day...a parking tax of $2/day would generate 125M/yr (2x250Kx250days)
a Cigarette Tax of say a $1/pack 17% of the population smoke generating approx 86M/yr (2,791,000x.17x365x.5)
a Cocktail Tax of say .50/drink..I wouldn't even attempt to calculate the revenue from that...on second thought about 150M (4100 establishments approx x50 patronsx4drinksx365)
an Entertainment tax of what $2/admission to all events whether cultural, sports, artistic...
Gee, I can see 1/2B+/year in new revenue if council wants to take the step....
 
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Greg Banks said:
Remember with CoTA there are tax impementation measures available to Council if they want to take the heat
eg a Parking Tax...there is an estimated what 250K vehicles commuting to Toronto each day...a parking tax of $2/day would generate 125M/yr (2x250Kx250days)
a Cigarette Tax of say a $1/pack 17% of the population smoke generating approx 86M/yr (2,791,000x.17x365x.5)
a Cocktail Tax of say .50/drink..I wouldn't even attempt to calculate the revenue from that...on second thought about 150M (4100 establishments approx x50 patronsx4drinksx365)
an Entertainment tax of what $2/admission to all events whether cultural, sports, artistic...
Gee, I can see 1/2B+/year in new revenue if council wants to take the step....
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Yes, city council has more revenue tools available than just property taxes and transit fares. Parking tax is definitely a good idea. However....

1. There should be some logical connection between a tax and the expense it's supposed to cover. The parking tax makes sense because the goal is to eventually shift people away from cars and toward transit. As fewer people drive, and less taxes are paid through parking, presumably more money is made up at the fare box. "Sin" taxes make less sense for supporting transit expansion. It creates an perverse incentive in which transit expansion is tied to the amount that people smoke and drink. Sin taxes are better dedicated to things like health care or police enforcement, etc.

2. Proposing new taxes and new transit plans requires a mayor who has the support of council. Miller was able to do things like this (usually), because he kept all of council on the same page. Under Ford, no one's steering the ship and the transit agenda is extremely fragmented. Because we have a weak mayor system, there will always be a risk that City Hall is going to be unable to come together to support a coherent transit plan. The Ontario government - even in a minority - is in a much better position to establish transit plans.

3. Toronto can tax and spend all it wants, but transit is still a regional issue that requires regional solutions. Unless all the municipalities in the GTA get on board with a particular tax and transit plan, it's unlikely that one will do it on its own. Even the LRT plan, which supports more local trips, benefited from the fact that several municipalities decided to adopt the technology.
 
Silence&Motiom...You're right on the Sin tax so what to do, would be, direct them specifically to Cluster "A" programmmes and TCHC (would make a good dent in SoGR backlog wouldn't it)...That will free up a portion of property tax which then could be used to increase the "new transit budget"...
Toronto already receives $ 61.35/person x Toronto's 2011 population yearly for the foreseeable future from the Feds out of gas tax rebate...the Feds are already covering another 660M for the B-D Extension, 697M for the YUS extension and don't forget the 330M for Sheppard...So it would seem the Feds have put alot on the table....The province has got what 8.4B wrapped up in Toronto transit expansion..From the look of it,the senior levels brought quite a bit to with, it seems to me the City hasn't fully sidled up to the table yet...
 
Olivia Chow's been wayyyy more active on Twitter than usual these past couple of days. Prelude to her announcement?
 
I've received hints that Olivia will be launching as early as Thursday. She'll run a positive campaign but won't ignore Ford and Tory. She'll label Tory as more of the same lack of vision and ambition that will keep Toronto from reaching its potential. We need to aim higher not just fill potholes!
John Tory's Achilles' heel is that he was the CEO of Rogers, one of the most hated companies in the GTA. She'll remind people about that at every opportunity.
She'll be running a oneToronto themed campaign that will pull on our heart strings for our city and make us view Ford as the villain who spent 4 years pitting us against one another. I have no doubt that Laschinger can execute on that. I'm eager to see how he pulls it off.
 
I sure hope she has some specific visions and ideas. I don't need my heartstrings tugged, and I already know Ford is a villain. What's her plan for change and moving forward? That's what I want to see.
 
PinkLucy said:
I sure hope she has some specific visions and ideas. I don't need my heartstrings tugged, and I already know Ford is a villain. What's her plan for change and moving forward? That's what I want to see.
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She has a very ambitious agenda. Surprisingly in fact. It's not going to be easy to pull off but if she gets a strong mandate, she can make it happen.
 
MetroMan said:
She has a very ambitious agenda. Surprisingly in fact. It's not going to be easy to pull off but if she gets a strong mandate, she can make it happen.
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Hopefully by not wanting a Ford circus we don't by default get a return to Miller time. Not that Chow is Miller 2.0. On the contrary, I'd like to see how she's neither.
 
Will Chow be running more of a Miller-type campaign or Horwath-type campaign?

Also it'll be interesting to see who the NDP nominates to replace Chow.
 
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