Why You Should Never Take Kate Carraway to IKEA
Subway Suicide Statistics Released
Newsstand: November 27, 2009
Days of Carltons Past
Union Station is getting a $100 million facelift. Commuters will not just be getting wider platforms but a whole new one when engineers and construction workers finish moving a sewer by 2008.
In other transit news, ridership is up all over the country but especially in the GTA. GTA ridership increased by 4% despite rising prices and crumbling infrastructure.
Council restricts garage sales to two a year. The reform was designed to take out those who were using residential garage sales as impromptu stores/flea markets. Now if they could move that fast on other issues of note....
Royson James proposes in his column that councillors be limited to three terms. We like the idea, many many many councillors and civic politicians take what seem like life-long terms at council and having a cheque on this would be healthy for democracy.
Dennis Mills is still pondering a run for mayor. Toronto area right-wingers must just be fed up with Jane Pitfield's inability to light any kind of a fire under Mayor Miller.
Helen Kennedy gets the NDP nomination in Ward 20. Her old boss, Olivia Chow, backed her up which undoubtedly helped her win.
Greg Sorbara returns to Cabinet as Finance Minister and thankfully Harinder Takhar gets yanked from the Ministry of Transportation. Takhar has raised a lot of controversy over his business links and mishandled transportation issues like the tolls on the 407.
Councillors want to talk about protective shields in taxis. The Danforth bank bandit strikes again.
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Yesterday was the first time I have been home early enough to watch Channel 10's City Council feed.
After watching them heatedly argue about how late they should be allowed to send out their newsletters, I am amazed that the city hasn't been destoryed in some sort of disaster or conflagration. What on Earth do these people get paid $87k/yr for!?
I guess with Sorbara back any chance the crazy Steeles-Vaughan subway will be rethought is gone. Meanwhile the SRT keeps on ticking towards end-of-life, the city is rebuilding the streetcars again and there's no spare buses.
Transit is underfunded, but with the number of commuter cars of cars parked at Yorkdale and Wilson, and the number of people living along the 400, I'm not convinced the Steeles-Vaughan subway is so crazy.
Not Sheppard subway crazy, anyway.
Michael, you're not wrong about the commuter parks - but it's GO Transit that should be meeting the needs above Steeles if only because it would be a lot quicker than a stop-start trip along the Spadina line.
Well, GO Tranist does serve those areas already. If you agree with me about the commuters at Yorkdale and Wilson, then I hope you'll agree that the people who park there probably need to go to destinations other than Union Station and at other times than just morning and evening. Otherwise they'd use the GO.
It is funny that the Spadina subway line extension after going to York University is going to jog all the way over to Jane and Steeles where there is very little, except apartments and lots of land by real estate companies partially owned by Greg Sorbara.
I bet their values are going to skyrocket once the province spends all that money.
Of course Sorbara doesn't have a very good reputation as a landlord. I hear his tenants call him a slumlord!
Sorbara tenants face big rent hike
Toronto Star - Wednesday, April 4, 1990, p. A32
by Derek Ferguson
Consumer Minister Greg Sorbara is part-owner of two North York apartment buildings where 650 tenants face a proposed 52 per cent rent hike.
The Sorbara family is using a loophole in the province's rent review law to jack up rents at 5000 Jane St. and 4001 Steeles Ave. West in North York, New Democrat MPP Dave Cooke says.
Karen Davies, a tenant at 4001 Steeles, said the propsal will mean a rent increase of $301 on her $580-a-month, two bedroom apartment.
One company controlled by the Sorbara family owns the buildings. Another family firm owns the land they're on.
One Sorbara company is hitting the other family firm with astronomical increases in land rental charges, Cooke told the Legislature yesterday.
The landlord has applied to pass on to tenants the cost of those increases, along with the costs of long-overdue repairs, Cooke said.
Sorbara said he doesn't know about the proposed rent hikes because his financial interests are kept in a blind trust to comply with the province's conflict-of-interest law.
"As a matter of protocol I never discuss my family's business," Sorbara told reporters.
His brother Edward, who represents NHD Developments Limited, one of the two family companies involved, said Cooke is off base.
NHD constructed all the buildings on the properties, which is owned by the family's other company, Antica Investments Limited, he said.
Under the terms of that agreement, NHD holds a 99-year lease signed in 1970 that allows it to raise the rent to market value every 20 years.
"On that basis we have applied to rent review for an increase," he said.
The family firms aren't violating rent review legislation becuse the proposal is part of a lease agreement that was signed five years before rent review came into effect, Edward Sorbara said.
Liberal Housing Minister John Sweeney said his ministry is investigating Cooke's allegations.
If the company is trying to pass the land cost from one company to another and on to the tenants, the firm is breaking the law, Sweeney said.
"You can't do that," he said.
If that's the case, the rent review board has the power to demand a decrease rather than an increase, Sweeney said.
Cooke said the company is using the lease deal to pass on increased land costs rather than improvements to the building. "About half or a little better than half of the total increase applied for is a result of land," he said.
The land rental fees at 5000 Jane Street, at Steeles Avenue, are to increase to $720,225 a year from $82,744. The fees for 4001 Steeles Avenue West, at Weston Road, are to rise to $881,100 from $60,207 ayear, Cooke said.
They are going to be able to have that return on the land for the next 20 years," Cooke said.
He stopped short of calling for the consumer minister's resignation, but said Sorbara's development ties should be probed.
"I think we should be lookng at the relationship of the development industry in general and the Liberal party, and obviously one of the specifics would be Mr. Sorbara."
Davies, one of about a dozen tenants in the Steeles Ave. apartment building who was at the Legislature yesterday, told reporters the improvements being done do not justify the rent increase.
She also expressed concern that the consumer minister and his family business are involved.
It's certainly not a good perception to the average citizen," said Davies, an adjudicator with teh Ontario Labour Relations Board.
The government is prepared to amend the rent review law if its probe reveals a loophole, Sweeney said.
That's hilarious "Greg". Way to go. You've picked out a 16 year old article that implies the allegations, but not the articles after the fact. Was any wrongdoing actually determined? Why don't you show the later articles? Could it be that they don't paint the appropriate picture for your smear?