1108CATH `Smart-growth expert`s` testimony assailed by PROUD lawyer
Smart-growth policies don`t apply to the Port Place project, and even if they did, the tower is not smart development at all, the lawyer representing tower opponents says.
And the so-called smart-growth expert who testified for the developer appears to have "confused intensification with smart growth," said Jane Pepino, lawyer for anti-tower citizen group PROUD (Port Realizing Our Unique Distinction).
Speaking on the sixth day of final arguments being presented at the Ontario Municipal Board hearing being held to decide the fate of the controversial development, Pepino said the evidence of Mark Brickell, the vice-president of smart growth and partnerships for Niagara Economic Development Corp., "was full of baseless assertions of appropriate intensification, entirely devoid of any heritage planning considerations."
The biggest transportation plan in the Toronto region`s history failed to recommend road tolls as a way to pay for billions in needed transit improvements.
But if the absence of tolls from Metrolinx`s $50 billion transit expansion plan suggests the idea is dead, nobody told the 125 people, including almost two dozen from the provincial government, who packed a one-day conference in Toronto last week.
1108ONTR Ottawa, Ontario share auto bailout concerns
OTTAWA–Ontario will team up with Ottawa on a visit to Washington to get the "lay of the land" regarding a U.S. bailout of the auto industry.
The federal and provincial governments are on the same page when it comes to salvaging the battered sector, Ontario Economic Development Minister Michael Bryant said yesterday. But the Ontario minister appears to want a decision on financial assistance sooner than does federal Industry Minister Tony Clement, who is leading the trip.
After 13 years of providing low-cost Internet access to residents of Brantford and Brant County, Brant FreeNet has pulled the plug, citing an inability to compete with attractive "bundling" deals now being offered by Bell Canada and Rogers Communications.
Orillia city councillors have ended a longstanding partnership with the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport.
Monday night, in a seven-to- two recorded vote, councillors agreed to pull out of their partnership in the airport commission with the municipalities of Barrie and Oro- Medonte. Orillia joined the commission, which oversees the airport located on Line 7 in Oro-Medonte, in 1990.
AMHERSTBURG - Town council struggled Monday to chip away at its 2009 budget so that the increase in taxes could remain at around three per cent.
As it stood Monday, property taxes on a home valued at $191,521 would rise $51 to $1,386, an increase of 3.81 per cent. That includes a 1.38 per cent levy for "proposed new initiatives," projects over and above the operation and capital costs.
OTTAWA - Facing closing at the end of the month, the Mayfair Theatre has found new life thanks to a self-described "dream team of film-loving investors" with ambitious plans that could even include serving alcohol to film-goers.
The partners -- John Yemen, a film scholar and entrepreneur, Paul Gordon, the Mayfair`s current film conservator and part-time projectionist, and filmmakers Lee Demarbre and Ian Driscoll -- will announce Tuesday that they have leased the 76-year-old Bank Street cinema for 10 years from its Vancouver owner, Stephen Ng.
Two city councillors proposing an alternative public transit plan got an enthusiastic reception yesterday from supporters who want more trains and fewer buses in Ottawa`s transportation future.
Close to 200 people filled the Gladstone Theatre as Capital Councillor Clive Doucet and Kitchissippi Councillor Christine Leadman unveiled their plan, which would cut out the proposed expansion of the bus system and make rail transit the priority.
Dan Howard learned the hard way that people who live in heritage districts can`t always do what they want.
Howard installed a new front door, with a transom made of plastic and aluminum, on his Dill Street house in the Victoria Park heritage conservation district.
Individuals and organizations are being urged to seek money from the city for environmental projects.
The new Local Environmental Action Fund will eventually make a total of $5 million available to residents, city agencies and not-for-profit organizations.
1108DAJX
Ajax eyeing reconstructing Fairall Street
AJAX -- Building Canada could include a new Fairall Street.
Ajax is submitting an application under the Building Canada Fund, an infrastructure program that involves the federal and provincial governments. Dave Meredith, the operations and environmental services director, told council last week staff recommends reconstructing Fairall Street.
1108DOSH Council will try for four per cent tax cap in `09
OSHAWA -- Economic times are tough and that goes for City Hall, too.
At a special meeting Monday, councillors learned more than $3 million has to be cut out of the 2009 budget if they hope to keep their promise of capping next year`s property tax increase at four per cent.
City manager Bob Duignan said several factors are conspiring to put the City in a tight financial spot. "There`s the economic downturn, the loss of investments and assessment growth, inflation and the impact of what`s happening at General Motors," he said.
1108DSCG
Scugog adds `rural focus` to transit plan
SCUGOG -- Scugog has thrown its two cents into the mix regarding a proposed transportation plan for the Greater Toronto Area, which was somewhat panned by municipal officials last month when they first laid eyes on the draft document. At the Oct. 27 council session, Scugog`s political masters raised concerns that the recently-released Metrolinx draft plan focussed extensively on the GTA`s bigger, urban centres, leaving small rural communities as little more then a footnote in the plan.
It was a bedbug near Maciej Ceglowski`s Travel Lodge coffeemaker that prompted her to say enough is enough.
"I noticed bite marks on my arms. The hotel didn`t have a response," Ceglowski said in an email from Poland of her 2006 stay at the Travel Lodge on Market St. in San Francisco. That stay pushed her to start bedbugregistry.com where bloggers write about their bedbug experiences in hotels and apartments.
A decision that sliced hundreds of millions of dollars from the property tax assessments of Toronto`s biggest office towers can be appealed, a court has ruled.
The issue involves an obscure legal argument over the precise meaning of the words "fee simple, if unencumbered."
St. Thomas suffered another blow to its economy yesterday as ZF, a maker of heavy duty steering systems, announced it will close at the end of 2009, with the loss of 57 jobs.
The manufacturer of steering gear for trucks produced by Ford, General Motors, Freightliner and Volvo will transfer operations to Brazil. The company, a partnership of ZF and Bosch, both from the Stuttgart area of Germany, opened on Harawill Street in St. Thomas in 2001.
1108TNTO Sellers roll out red carpet as Toronto home sales cool
The homebuyer who purchases the spacious, two-storey detached brick house on Westlake Avenue will get a new fridge, a gas stove, a finished basement --and a new car.
The owner, who has been trying to sell it for two months and repeatedly lowered the price, decided to list the three-bedroom home in East York for $379,000, with a purchase bonus of a vehicle worth up to $15,000.
1108CATH Port proposal a `military-style assault`: resident
From the perspective of an ordinary Port Dalhousie resident, the Port Place development is an attack on the neighbourhood, says Hank Beekhuis, one of the citizens who appealed the project to the Ontario Municipal Board.
"This community has borne the brunt of a well-organized military-style assault by the developer, complete with a battalion of lawyers and paid experts, special forces of lobbyists and well-orchestrated community organizations, T-shirts, billboards, and even a psychological warfare of dirty tricks, pressure tactics and sordid politics, which has led to a complete lack of trust in this development," Beekhuis said.