Comment 33656

By seancb (registered) - website | Posted September 16, 2009 at 12:23:00

I sent my letter in this morning:

Mayor and Council,

The new light shed on the Connaught debacle shows us that we absolutely cannot trust this consortium with our public funds nor our heritage buildings.

Battaglia says the tax arrears will be paid as soon as they get rolling on the project. On what should our trust in his word be based on?

If we reward this group for their failure to pay taxes by tossing millions of public dollars their way, we are sending a message to future developers that we are eager to give in to such bullying.

Speculators who sit on prime downtown buildings and operate surface parking lots on premium land - all the while not paying taxes - are contributing to the decay of the core. To reward them is ludicrous. Now is the time to repossess these properties and sell them to someone who will actually build to the standard that our city deserves.

We need to keep the Connaught a hotel. If we truly want to provide affordable housing, the $18,000,000 could be spent on one hundred houses spread throughout the city at $180,000 each, and offerred to those in need at 80% of market value.

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