Comment 71456

By bob lee (anonymous) | Posted November 19, 2011 at 17:44:45

I don't know if there's a very cunning strategy at play here, but this story is really becoming an outrage for me. Useful, reusable building downtown being destroyed, new building being put up subsidized by the city for any servicing costs, with rent paid by the city above market rate for public health to go there, with consequential loss of plans in place to develop downtown space public health was already looking at on King st. Plus BoE gets building on the mountain, paid for out of property taxes plus development charges, on which they pay no tax.

And meanwhile the discussion many are having is over aesthetics, as though that had anything to do with it. The result of this will be that Mac and the BoE get sweetheart deals, the mayor and council get a PR coup, and the city and our already dire financial situation gets further decimated.

It makes me think that Bob Young was pretty much following this exact same script last year, but for whatever miraculous reason we saw through it. Maybe the aesthetic value of Ivor Wynne was not enough to provoke the same sorry sideshow that has taken place here. Maybe the renderings of the new campus were just too seductive. Maybe the school board and university are just too unaccountable and distant for anyone to think they have a chance to influence their decision-making. But in any case, this win-win-win for public institutions and personalities is a big lose for people who pay the taxes and use the services.

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