Okay, now that Mouse had calmed me down, here goes. Where to begin? Let’s start with the nice letter from the City explaining that in order to serve us better and stream-line processes and reduce the number of trucks on the streets, they will now pick up our ‘residual’ garbage – the stuff we are meant to feel terrible about because we haven’t been able to sort it previously for the City – every other week. But they will now pick up the Green Bin every week, which is great, except ours turns into a large frozen block for most of the winter. When I mentioned this to the City they were amazed I couldn’t put it in my heated garage – note to city – we don’t all have heated garages in which to store your compost.
So, less frequent garbage pick-up should turn into tax savings yes? But no. The next letter we got was from MPAC. Now this is a neat trick. The provincial politicians who foisted this arms’ length tax grab on us did it about 5 years ago. So the increases have been showing up, but not actually being added to the tax bill. Now that those who passed the legislation are safely into their next term, they are going to start to ‘phase in’ the increases. The claim is if you are near the average in increases your taxes won’t rise. That is if they change the mill-rate. But forgetting that crap, our property taxes are going to sky-rocket. Our appraisal came in at twice the city average and they are going to cause our taxes to rise by an astonishing amount. But no one is accountable. MPAC is ‘arms’ length’ and Provincial, but the City reaps the benefit. Taxation without representation. Bad plan.
Now where are we to get the money? If we sell the house then we would theoretically benefit, as long as we didn’t want to live in the same kind of neighbourhood, and could find a cheaper house with lower taxes. But we haven’t moved in 20 years. Our taxes were $1800 when we moved in, and they will be over $5000 soon. But we don’t benefit from the increase in value of our house until we move. And we don’t want to.
Then there was a lovely ad in our local paper explaining how our delightful Mayor, Jim Watson, had been holding the budget increases down. And then there was the bait and switch letter from the Committee of Adjustment people saying that the Condo they allowed to be built nearby despite exceeding the neighbourhood zoning for height, and being granted too few parking spaces, had applied to have the restrictions on commercial use lifted, without a requirement for new parking spots. The restrictions on use were necessary to get the initial approval, BECAUSE OF THE PARKING. I suspect the City received ‘money in lieu of parking’ (one of my favourite insane policies – they get the money, we get the parking) in the first place.
So many meetings, so much time, and then they just try to screw you when you are not looking.
Our neighbourhood is being destroyed by over-development and it will soon be a windy corridor of ugly apartment buildings.
Oh, and there is an infill built 18 inches from our lot, with a window that looks directly into our bedroom window despite the written assurances from the builder that this would not happen.
Have a nice day.
testing, testing, one two three