With the massive condo boom in the city of Toronto the past 10 years, it seems logical that our city’s property tax base has grown proportionately.

If you live or have lived in a condo, you have probably had that moment of thinking, ‘why am I paying $2,500 per year for 650 square feet again to the city in taxes?!’ After all, you don’t receive the same perks and services that a homeowner in the city receives.

But let’s focus for a moment on the money. We have been building at a massive pace and accumulating huge revenues in property taxes, and most of these increases are coming from land or buildings where the taxes collected have increased 500 fold!

Let’s conservatively say that 7,000 units are created per year and are actually brought to market where owners have taken occupancy. With an average tax base of $2,500 per unit (taxes are assessed on market value and not on market size; the wealthier you are, the more you pay) this would equate to $17,500,000. Yes, a paltry amount in comparison overall to the city budget, but this amount additionally would be added every year!

Over 10 years now conservatively we are looking at $175,000,000. This doesn’t include one-time fees charged to developers or a purchaser of the said units, and of course doesn’t include our lovely Toronto Land Transfer tax.

There is a massive amount of money being added to the city coffers, all the while we keep hearing about deficits and cuts to essential services. Our streets should be lined in gold and our waste pipes with imported rare metal and steel! Instead we get plastic tubing made in China.

Today they say we need tolls to afford our roads. Last week they threw out $20 million in parking ticket revenue and proceeded to announce the next day parking rates were going up because there is a $1.5 million dollar shortfall? Oh yeah, then they went and eliminated a massive amount of street parking spaces along Richmond and Adelaide streets to paint in bike lanes.

#WTFT.O.

I’m sorry, but it needs to be said. We are such a rich city that has no clue where the money goes. Thankfully we didn’t send that letter and commit ourselves to $50 million to ‘apply’ to host the 2024 Olympics. $10 billion + they say it would cost and converted to Toronto and Ontario currency that is about $15 billion Canadian. Go #Liberals!

Instead they should invite every Torontonian out during the Olympics and place big screen TV’s along Bloor, Yonge, Queen, and King streets etc.; every 10 feet and have us all dine and drink to our hearts content while footing the bill. Now that’s a party!