Raise the Hammer

"It sure is easy to sit at your computer and decide how to spend someone else's money."

"Nothing I have read yet has indicated that Mr Blanchard has asked for any public money. So if he is the only one with skin in the game, if he has proposed multi use, including residential which is exactly what this downtown needs more of. Then godspeed sir."

If someone pays property taxes to the City of Hamilton, they "have skin in the game". Anyone who resides in Hamilton, in a home or in an apartment, pays property taxes directly or indirectly. On the other hand, Mr. Blanchard and other property developers have plenty of say in how and where, we, as tax payers, spend our money when his developments require services, both hard and soft.

And in fact, when a government chooses to allow the development community through laissez-faire policies to decide what shape and form the development of the city will take, it not only cedes managerial, planning, and economic control, but it chooses the market's winners and losers by not exercising those same controls.

The role of the municipality ought not to be the economic well being of any one individual or industrial sector, but the well being of the corporation it is charged with managing which is the municipality itself.

And when all is considered, the municipality has a very direct and vital interest in how the corner is to be developed. Cranes in the air that develop another Jackson Square with it's foreboding walls overlooking James St. sheltering public drunks and shunning passersby, is not what the corner needs. Any development ought to ensure the integrity of the streetscape is preserved and that the corner remains a busy place where people gather.

Of course, all of that is my opinion and to express it is my entitlement in a democratic system of government whether I have a direct financial interest or not.

Comment edited by ViennaCafe on 2012-10-28 22:49:27