In the argument, the city's lawyer points out the City of Oakville receives a payment of $50. From the Feds for each location. it's not identified as a permit fee. We didn't hear about Oakville spending $3 million on a court battle with another level of government . The story seems to suggest the arrangement was made by agreement. Which suggests these things can be worked out without court action.
Of course the $3 million could have been paid from city insurance . Hamilton's bylaw was
challenged by the Federal government.
As we have seen in Aurora, extraordinary payouts for litigation resulted in premium increase the following year.
Premiums are part of a municipality's operating budget. Therefore taxes must be collected enough to pay the premiums.
$3 million dollars may be a drop in the bucket for Hamilton. It would be unlikely to cost less
to challenge an Aurora Bylaw.
If $850,000 in litigation fees resulted in 41% increase in premiums, $3 million would mean the increase would be three and a half times that amount.
It's kind of fun tossing figures about as if they are not actually real.
We spent $2. 470 million for 6 acres of land we don't actually have a use for. The need was not identified in any economic forecast. It came out of a reserve set up by bylaw for a specific purpose.
But...what the hell... why worry about the pesky details? People aren't paying any attention anyway.
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1 comment:
You are probably correct about people not paying attention. They do seem to take some notice around budget time however, and the way we are going there are likely to be problems well before then.
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