Rail lands levy on tax bill "tacky," Boldt says

Coun. Maureen Boldt says it’s “tacky” to break out the rail lands levy onto property tax bills, “and all the negativity around it has cost us funding from the province already.”

Boldt made her comments at Thursday night’s budget meeting during a discussion about the levy.

Council has decided to identify on the tax bill how much of a person’s taxes will be going specifically toward paying down the $10 million debentures used to purchase the CP rail lands.

The levy isn’t an extra tax, Mayor Vic Fedeli has said in the past. Rather it’s a way of taking rail lands payments out of the city’s capital budget, where a previous council had placed them.

Negative outcry
Regardless, Boldt said, the bad-mouthing the rail lands deal has been receiving recently won’t help the city’s cause in seeking further funding.

Boldt said while she’s bashed the former Harris government, it had told the city there was money put away for rail lands development.

“First it was $40 million, then $25 million, and then Al said $4.9 million three times,” Boldt said.

Funding in jeopardy
But there was such a “negative outcry” from the community, Boldt said during a break in last night’s meeting, the province “couldn’t cut us some funding.”

“And with a lot of the media coverage we’ve just had and comments from our elected officials I feel that the funding we just got, the $1.9 million, was in jeopardy and future funding is in jeopardy,” Boldt said.

“And if we don’t stop bashing it we’re not going to get the funding to ever get it developed. The money was there for us and we lost it and we’ve got to shut up about being negative about it.”

Worried to death
Things are happening in relation to the rail lands, Boldt said, referring to plans by Dalron Developments to build a retirement complex on one piece of the property.

Still the situation remains worrisome, Boldt said.

“We’ve got the friends of the waterfront who are absolutely worried to death now that they’ll be no other funding coming because everyone’s been so negative. So let’s get on with the project and stop rear view mirror politics here and quit bashing previous councils,” Boldt said.

“We made a good decision at the time based upon the best information we had with the promise of all this funding, so let’s shut up and get it developed.”

Having a mortgage
Coun. Sarah Campbell agreed with Boldt about breaking out the levy.

“I don’t think it needs to be separate because it sends a negative message,” Campbell said.

Coun. Dave Mendicino, a mortgage broker, believes breaking the levy out is a good idea.

“It’s like having a mortgage. It will be there for everybody to see and once it’s done the taxpayer doesn’t pay any more.”

Makes no sense
The rail lands payments, Coun. Daryl Vaillancourt said, are part of the “real costs to running the city.”

“Putting that in the business portion makes no sense whatsoever,” Vaillancourt said.

Coun. George Maroosis said it didn’t matter to him how the rail lands payments were handled.

“I just take a look at what the final total on the tax bill is and compare it to last year’s total, which is what I’m sure other taxpayers do too,” Maroosis said.

Three per cent of budget
Budget chief Peter Chirico said people he’s spoken to “want to identify what this debt is because it’s three per cent our budget.”

Fedeli disagreed with Boldt’s contention that the breakout would cost the city money.

I don’t believe we’re going to lose any provincial grants because we’ve identified the levy on our tax bill. I just don’t buy into that at all.”