One landlord is appealing for more help from tenants in the battle against bed bugs.
Lindsay Goulding, a young mother who first discovered the blood-sucking critters on her son`s crib in June at 77 Huntley St., and other tenants in the highrise apartment near Jarvis and Bloor St. have filed lawsuits over the plague.
It seemed like a simple idea for diehard cyclist Mary-Margaret McMahon – get the city to install more bike racks in her neighbourhood.
But when it comes to city hall, it`s never as easy as it seems.
McMahon has been asking for more post-and-ring racks to be installed outside Woodbine Station, near East Lynn Park on the Danforth, where she helped organize a farmers` market last summer, and near her gym at Victoria Park Ave. and Gerrard St.
General Motors of Canada said yesterday it will shut its Oshawa truck plant on May 14, rather than July 1 as previously announced, because market conditions in the United States have worsened.
"When you look at the uncertainty in the U.S. market and the huge volatility there ... based on where demand is now, it looks like it`s just strong enough to run through until May," said Stew Low, a spokesperson for GM Canada.
1108TNTO Condo Critic: King-Bathurst meeting its challenges
It doesn`t always look it, but the King and Bathurst Sts. area has a lot going for it. Despite its scruffy edges, it`s well situated and well-connected. It has also managed to retain a sense of history, something that seems to recede with each passing year. Perhaps because it has long been a neighbourhood no one cared about, it was saved from the development pressure that has remade other precincts from top to bottom. Now, of course, it`s fast becoming condo city; everywhere you turn there`s either a construction site or another recently completed project.
London city hall wants to hike water rates by eight per cent in each of the next four years, but those plans are on a collision course with politicians loathe to burden taxpayers reeling in a tough economy.
The plan would add $29 next year, and $132 by 2012, to the water bill of a typical homeowner paying $365 this year. "We have to be extremely sensitive to what people can afford," Coun. Paul Hubert, who next month becomes chair of city council`s environment and transportation committee, said yesterday.
The co-owner of a Komoka-area campground is seething -- and worried her 45-year-old, second-generation business won`t survive -- as she and the municipality battle over the future of Oriole Park. Wendy Nesseth says all she wants to do is develop the campground into an operation with year-round recreational vehicles.
1108LNDN Slow job growth expected to moderate area housing market
London`s hot housing market will flatten out next year with home prices rising only two per cent, says a forecast from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. At a housing outlook conference yesterday, CMHC analyst David Lan said slow employment growth will start to bite into the robust London area real estate market, which has been setting sales records in recent years while home prices rose at the rate of four to six per cent.
1108CATH Downtown businesses face soaring assessment rates
St. Catharines Mayor Brian McMullan is forming a committee to review property tax assessments on downtown businesses, some of which saw increases of more than 100 per cent this year.
McMullan said some of the assessment increases — ranging from 35 per cent to 112 per cent — are simply out of touch with what properties are actually worth in the city`s core.
If the numbers are not adjusted, he said, businesses owners are going to suffer.
1108CATH City`s bid to expropriate former Canada Hair Cloth building called premature
A bid by the City of St. Catharines to expropriate the former Canada Hair Cloth building downtown is "premature," a hearing officer has ruled.
Without a concrete plan set out by the city for the 19th-century building`s reuse, hearing officer Douglas Colbourne found "there was nothing ... before me to suggest it need be in public ownership."
Colbourne released his 10-page writing findings on the matter Thursday after presiding over a "hearing of necessity" Sept. 16.
The city`s plan for taller and denser construction around Ottawa`s transit system includes a significant test case: the Centrepointe commercial district around the Baseline transitway station.
Under the city`s latest transit plan, Baseline is to become an even more significant transit hub than it already is, across Woodroffe Avenue from Algonquin College. It`s to become a transfer point between trains and buses, built into a major expansion of the college, and to serve a new city archives building, Ben Franklin Place and existing and planned commercial and residential buildings nearby.
The City of Ottawa is adding another $10.1 million to its 2009 budget shortfall, though plunging fuel prices might help compensate.
City treasurer Marian Simulik said yesterday that a misunderstanding between the city and the Ontario government had the city estimating that it was receiving $27 million from the province for disability programs in 2009 as part of the "uploading" of costs for these services.
1108ONTR Outlook healthy for hiring in public sector
As the reality of a global economic recession sets in, provincial governments across Canada may tighten the purse strings in coming months. Nevertheless, the employment outlook remains healthy for public sector workers, given that many employees will retire soon while demand for services grows.
In the West, Alberta`s labour market remains the strongest in North America, according to a recent report by the Fraser Institute, while B.C.`s ranks second-best in Canada. The continued strength of western Canadian labour markets, while moderating, combined with an aging population will result in aggressive provincial public sector hiring.
1108KWCG Council considers committee to deal with future hydro merger
GUELPH
In an effort to not repeat September`s failed merger process with Horizon Utilities, the creation of a steering committee to guide the future of Guelph Hydro Inc. will be before city council Monday.
Composed of four yet unknown city councillors, Mayor Karen Farbridge and the Guelph Hydro board, the committee would be charged with guiding the local utility`s direction and mandate its work toward the Community Energy Plan.
1108YORK York buys 300 acres of land in East Gwillimbury, Whitchurch-Stouffville
Regional council approved purchasing nearly 300 acres of land in East Gwillimbury and Whitchurch-Stouffville for the expansion of the Bendor and Graves tracts of the York Regional Forest.
1108YNEW Council contemplates heritage designation
Is heritage preservation more important than homeowner rights?
Newmarket council is discussing the possibility of imposing a heritage designation on a house at 440-442 Eagle St., but homeowner Peter Stirrup has declined the heritage designation three times.
So now, Councillor Joe Sponga wants to preserve what is being called the oldest house in Newmarket without the owner`s approval.
"I think the rights of the community to preserve (its) heritage supersedes the rights of the homeowner," he said during committee of the whole. "This is the oldest building in Newmarket."
Residents who want to learn more or would like to comment on the proposed plans to extend the Yonge Street subway line to Richmond Hill, will have their chance on Wednesday, Nov. 26.
1108DCLR Seven per cent increase won`t fly, councillors tell staff
CLARINGTON -- Neither council nor residents will accept anything close to the seven per cent property tax increase suggested in staff`s wish list for the 2009 budget. A budget presentation during a council education session Friday was "a very, very preliminary document," not to be confused with a final budget, Mayor Jim Abernethy said.
1108DOSH GM truck plant to close earlier than expected
OSHAWA -- CAW local 222 President Chris Buckley says the federal government has to act now to save jobs amidst the economic crisis that has brought General Motors to its knees.
"It just keeps getting worse every day," Mr. Buckley said Friday night, after the union representing GM workers in Oshawa told its members earlier in the day the truck plant is now tentatively scheduled to close May 14.
1108ONTR Condo buyers should prepare for `phantom` rent
When is a mortgage payment not a mortgage payment? Move into a newly completed condominium and you are likely to find out.
Reader Dennis Melnbardis raised the question in a recent e-mail. He ran into this vexing situation head on.
"[It] was a great mystery — and a huge unexpected cost. A few years ago when my father purchased a condo, he was charged what was described as `rent,` which we ended up paying for four months while we waited for the condo building to be `registered.` This apparently depended on the percentage of occupants who had actually moved into their units," he wrote.
The provincial government is ready to work with the battered auto sector, which employs nearly 400,000 Ontarians, but it will bring a "healthy skepticism" to the table, Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday.
Demands from the auto industry for help could cause Ontario`s projected $500 million deficit to "dramatically balloon," McGuinty told reporters after his speech at a Liberal policy convention at the Toronto Marriott Airport Hotel.
