What a perceptive comment
"I got my first up-close look at where my new neighbours are living while (coincidentally) distributing Garth Turner fliers over the past few weeks.
Several things struck me:
1) In the two and a half or so hours I spent pounding the pavement, I saw exactly two other people using the sidewalks - one walking a dog, and another handing out newspapers.
2) The reason for this may be the fact that there is absolutely no shade to be found. Anywhere.
3) The second development I walked through wasn’t bad, but the houses in first one (which was only a year old) all had peeling paint, heaved up paving and crumbling concrete on their steps and porches.
There are many, many things wrong with suburbia, particularly in its current, “insta-house” incarnation. Garth has covered most of them, but one thing we all have to remember is that the people living there aren’t the enemy.
Too often in Milton I’ve heard disparaging, marginally racist comments made about “those people” who have suddenly invaded our town, as if somehow they are to blame for the mess. In fact, not only are they the victims in all this, they are actually responsible for the only upside in this whole fiasco: added racial and cultural diversity in Milton.
Hell, I can actually buy some decent East Indian junk food now!
By all means, blame the developers, although they are only doing what corporations do - maximizing profits. Even better, blame the municipal politicians who, seduced by the siren song of millions in added property taxes and development fees, have rubber stamped every single development application that has crossed their desks with the sole caveat that there be at least one Big Box complex for every eight square kilometres of McHouses.
The fact that they have suddenly realized that all the development fees they’ve been charging don’t begin to cover the costs of servicing these developments, and in fact come too late to help anyone for years after they move in, elicits exactly zero sympathy from me.
And yet, they keep handing out those permits like candy and continue to leave all the fussy business of urban planning to corporations whose sole purpose is to squeeze as many high-priced, low-cost houses as they can into hundreds of undervalued acres of former farmland that we may never, ever get back.
They should all be run out of town on a rail."
2 comments:
At times, I have asked myself the question "Why do we need a planning department paid for by public funds when the private sector provides that seemingly efficient and very successful service at no direct cost to the taxpayer body? We just need one auditor to review their work, something that may not always be happening now?" Just a question!
On a related note, for some time now, I have maintained that every hole dug in this town costs the EXISTING tax payers extra on their own tax bill, and the more holes we dig, the more EXTRA they (we) have to pay ad infinitum. Unfortunately, the legislation apparently prevents that from being changed at this time. If that be so, let's change the d*%# legislation!
I agree with these two opinions. It's hard to figure out who is more culpable, the profit driven developers or the greedy and stupid local governments, who never seem to learn from their planning mistakes.
If you read the Saturday Star, every week there is a column from the current president of the Home Builders Association, with the same topic: that development fees are killing their businesses and must be reduced or eliminated immediately.
The Milton writer could have been writing about Cobourg, the only difference is we still can't buy "decent East Indian junk food" around here. Maybe next year.
DJO
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