Don't forget, Archivist - there are THREE Toronto airports.
Word is that the GTAA has, rather quietly, cut the subsidy they've been giving to Buttonville for the past decade or so. Makes one wonder if a push for Pickering is coming...
In the meantime, you're not the only one who noticed TPA isn't raking in the dough...
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/577774
Port authority owes only a fraction of $37 million property-tax arrears spanning a decade, panel rules
Paul Moloney
CITY HALL BUREAU
On the whole, the federal government is pretty good about paying property taxes on its 184 Crown properties in Toronto.
It mostly pays what the city bills even though, as the senior government, Ottawa is exempt from property taxes. Instead, it remits so-called "payments in lieu of taxes."
The glaring exception to the pattern of voluntary compliance is the Toronto Port Authority, a federal agency that has long disputed its tax bill for the island municipal airport, as well as port holdings and the Outer Harbour Marina.
The city puts those arrears at $37 million, a continuing sore point for Mayor David Miller, who blocked the port's plans to build a fixed link to the airport.
The mayor seems to mention the missing cash whenever the subject of the port authority comes up.
The city took the unusual step in 2006 of taking its case to a federally appointed Dispute Advisory Panel. Now the panel has ruled and the city lost big.
The agency has been told to pay a mere $5 million in taxes for 1999 through 2008.
The finding "is very positive," said the port authority's acting head Alan Paul.
But the city is considering whether to go to court on the issue, and councillors are to be briefed on the merits of that idea next month.
To Councillor Howard Moscoe, it's "outrageous" that the dispute panel would largely reject the city's tax claims, which are based on property values set by the Municipal Property Assessment Corp.
Moscoe favours seeking a legal remedy.
"The federal government is not paying their fair share," he said. "All we want them to do is pay their taxes. Even the Queen pays taxes."
Nothing shows how far apart the two sides are better than the island airport, a 122-hectare property reachable by a brief ferry ride from the foot of Bathurst St.
The port authority argued the airport site has a nominal value, while MPAC values it at $90.4 million.
Instead of focusing on land value, the dispute panel noted that Pearson International Airport and three other Ontario airports pay property taxes based on passenger numbers.
Pearson, with 30 million annually, pays 94 cents per passenger. A fair rate for the island airport would be 80 cents, the panel said. That equates to a $432,000 tax bill, based on 540,000 passengers a year.
That approach seems fair as far as the port authority is concerned.
"Our position was the airport should have a nominal value but a per-passenger amount makes sense, given we're really in competition with Pearson," Paul said.
Not surprisingly, a community group that would like the airport closed doesn't see it that way.
"This is not about fairness, or the airport carrying its fair share of the costs of running our city," said Brian Iler, chair of Community Air. "This is about giving the island airport yet another subsidy."
Iler called the airport site "the best piece of land on the waterfront. For them to get away with paying $432,000 a year, it's nothing."
Downtown councillor Adam Vaughan agreed the value put on the airport by the panel isn't accurate. "If it is, I've got a lot of developers who would buy it right now."
Property taxes on federal and provincial sites brought the city a combined $78 million last year.