4 Comments September 28, 2015 at 4:20 pm

news

Extra, Extra: $150 Restaurant for Sale (Sort of), Councillor Calls Metrolinx “Duplicitous,” Ontario Demands Tax Money from Toronto

By Sarah Niedoba

Every weekday’s end, we collect just about everything you ought to care about or ought not to miss.

Photo by George Socka from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Ever wanted to own your own restaurant? Now may be your chance. Ruthie Cummings, owner of the Danforth restaurant Das Gasthaus, is raffling off her business, and you can buy one of the 4,000 tickets for the low, low price of $150. Cummings is leaving her restaurant behind in order to care for her mother, who is ill. She wants to provide an opportunity for someone looking to pursue their dream business without having to deal with the startup costs. Tickets can be purchased here until Nov. 30, and for tipping you off, feel free to buy us a round of drinks if you win.

After reviewing Metrolinx plans for a local LRT station, first-term Councillor Jon Burnside (Ward 26, Don Valley West) is proving to be long on passion but short on diplomacy. In an article in the neighbourhood publication Leaside Life News, Burnside calls out Metrolinx for its plans to develop an area on the southeast corner of Bayview and Eglinton, where an LRT station will replace a McDonald’s and a parking lot. The local councillor accused Metrolinx of being “duplicitous” for wanting to further develop the intersection, claiming that they were using the “cloak of righteousness”—that is, the want to “promote transit-oriented development”—to justify their actions. Burnside added the idea that the regional transit agency “could do irreparable damage to our community.” Because heaven forbid that density should follow a new transit station, and we lose the community feel of the McDonald’s parking lot.
The Ontario government is arguing that its assessment of its own property is flawed, and Toronto should thus give it $65 million. The province is appealing property-tax assessments on 19 provincially owned properties in Toronto dating back to 1998, including the legislature building at Queen’s Park. To do so, it is arguing that its own system for property tax assessment, MPAC, screwed up when originally calculating the properties worth, and that the province is now owed some of the tax money that the city has been collecting on the properties for the past 17 years. The Globe and Mail estimates the amount to be $65 million. “This is so ridiculous,” Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) said of the problem. “How much confidence can members of the public have if the government that created the assessment system doesn’t even agree with it?”
From today’s edition of 12:36, Toronto’s new lunchtime tabloid newsletter: Doug Ford blew $558,724 on his own mayoral campaign. The last-minute 2014 candidate only ended up raising $356,167 of the $914,892 he spent, according to his final financial disclosures. (Rob managed to raise about half of the $437,977.91 his campaign spent, before cancer forced him to bail out.) “I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Doug told the Toronto Sun. “And I would do it again one time no matter if it is federally, provincially, or municipally.”(Want more 12:36? Subscribe to it now.)