Dunce Cap Time

Municipal infrastructure is getting creaky, leaky and old all across the country.  Governments at all levels; federal, provincial and municipal are beginning to get the picture.  A crumbling infrastructure and its unreliability poses a threat to those who drive on bridges and under them, on highways that suddenly develop huge vehicle-swallowing sinkholes.  Remediation and replacement is required. 

That costs a lot of money, but the alternative is not feasible; the economy suffers if transport trucks cannot operate expeditiously, if people heading to and from work and home cannot do so safely.

So, what is the City of Ottawa spending our money on?  Well, the good news is that a contract was signed that may help with the expeditious disposal of waste rather than continue to rely on shrinking dumpsite availability and a light rapid transit system to carry an increasing rushhour traffic to destinations is set finally to begin construction.

 All of these are hugely expensive, but quite necessary to the ongoing developing economy and to provide for security to residents.

At the other end of the scale of necessity is beautification.  In the sense that some areas of the city present as hideously unattractive commercial developments.

Ottawa hasn't all that many of these areas; for the most part it is a beautiful city with more than its share of outdoor greenery, extensive parks and parkways, and proximity to a jewel of a semi-wilderness forest administered by the National Capital Commission, as a large forested heritage acreage, the pride of the community and a gift to all Canadians.

The main thoroughfare - one of them actually - in Orleans, part of greater Ottawa, is a jumbled, thoughtless mess of unattractive strip malls, unsightly and unnecessarily so.  In a move to encourage entrepreneurial investment in beautifying St. Joseph Boulevard with the building of needed community social and commercial infrastructure, the city devised a taxpayer subsidy; through taxation relief, the funding and building of such structures would receive a considerable valuable boost.

Trouble is, when applications came in those who are authorized to approve them haven't been too discriminating.  Does the Ottawa taxpayer feel it is desirable to hand over funding extracted from household taxes to corporate interests whose business is making money, an enterprise they excel at?  These well-funded corporations invested in building huge shopping centres because they're money-making enterprises don't need taxpayer dollars to encourage them to do what they plan to do in any event.

Yet when Place d'Orleans decided to construct a purpose-built structure to house a new location for another remunerative enterprise, Farm Boy, they saw nothing amiss in  applying to the incentive program.  For which city council is prepared sign off on a grant to the value of $460,000 to the mall as incentive to build something that has already been built and has been in operation for months.

    
Applicants to the incentive program were expected to meet a minimum of one of four requirements to be viewed as qualified for consideration: new building addition, improved facade, upgraded landscaping and signage.  The new Farm Boy building certainly meets those criteria, but the mall is owned by a real estate investment trust that posted a net income of $139-million last quarter, with assets of $3.8-billion.  Tax money tossed out the window.

But this doesn't represent the only instance of absurdity in City Council deliberations.  Other businesses have taken advantage of the incentive, and perhaps the subsidy (relaxation of tax revenue imposed on the business) makes a little more sense there.  On the other hand, even to reward a dentistry practise for building a new site on the street, and a retirement home, both enterprises which qualified and are receiving the tax-relief bonus, it's wasted money because both would have proceeded to build without the incentive.

But there are other insults to the taxpayer.  How about handing over $48,000 in incentive subsidies to Tim Hortons?  Because that's just who the fourth recipient in the beautification project for St.Joseph Boulevard in Orleans is.  Tim Hortons, a well-established Canadian icon, a money-making franchise enterprise of the first order, and we're aiding and assisting it to the tune of $48,000 when any village idiot could readily think of better ways to spend scarce tax dollars.