Originally Posted by The Crow Whisperer
Check out the video from HRM's latest kangaroo court public hearing if you want to waste 2 hours. Jono was on the receiving end of what the Japanese call "Gai-ats" : outside pressure.
The community treat Jono like what the Japanese call gaijin, an outsider, despite him being born and raised in Halifax.
The hostility against Jono was unbelievable, they're such naysayers, the grandstanding was unbelievable, they're bullies, they'll throw anything at him
they can use to torpedo this development. And no, Jono does not really have permission to build as-of-right 4 stories HR-1 because the neighbors don't even want HR1, yes legally Jono has HR1 but practically no he does not, it's so political, so he might as well go for 100 stories because the handcuffing and dictating and lawfare from
the special interest groups is going to keep the project bogged down in a quagmire regardless.
Jono is so friendly, patient, polite, conciliatory, willing to work with anybody, talk to anybody, even hostile 3rd parties. He is bending over backwards to accommodate and appease and goes out of his way, he is offering every olive branch despite repeatedly being slapped away. He talks to the baptist church, the round church,
the anglican church, the blacks, the natives, the alphabet community, the young, the old, students, everybody.
He spent a fortune studying how to arrange the towers so they don't cast a shadow on the silly urban farm. Move to the country if you want to operate a commercial farm.
Jono's partnership with One North End proves that developers are being forced into 3rd party agreements with hostile special interest groups. Incidentally the guy from ONE kept calling it "Juno" Developments, but I digress.
Developers pay property tax, capital gains tax, development fees, business tax, personal income tax, wealth tax, financial transaction tax, sales tax, duties, customs, and the hidden tax of inflation. But it's never enough because developers are to be forced into vague "community benefit agreements" which is left deliberately vague and ill-defined, it is a mafiya-like shake down. Developers must pay huge cash lump sums to the city on top of development permits, fees AND taxes, used to buy votes from
special interests. Also developers are forced to enter into contracts with hostile third parties who hate them, they are forced to give away 30 percent of their property for less than what it costs to build and maintain them, and they have to fund free horse and buggie rides, and a pony, NO, TWO ponies, and and and the list goes on and on and on.
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