Quote:
Originally Posted by steveosnyder
Can I just ask... Does anyone know how much money the umbrella of "the Chipman's" have received in city funds and how it was finance from the City? I'm trying to put together an overall picture.
I don't really want to make this inflamitory, I just want to know the actual numbers and the method they are being paid for with.
|
This would be a significant undertaking given how far this goes back and depths at which the subsidies exist, both provincially and municipally. We can very easily get our hands on all of the SHED provisions that manifest in the TIF at the municipal level and all of the zoning and servicing agreements that would form part of the council decisions, but the real money is in the development agreements we don't have access to because they're done through CentreVenture and the city which don't publicly disclose. You'd need to request that through a freedom of information request if they'd give it at all. For example, while we know that the SHED TIF was originally conceived through a $25MM finance package borrowed by both the city and province to pass along where the city started on the hook for about $8.5MM and the province at over $12.5MM, we don't know how much of that has been subscribed. It's also becoming confusing because while CV is supposed to be administering the program, they've been out buying land to eventually apply these subsidies. So while the $25MM may now be maxed - we don't know - we do know that CV is in debt on two properties to the tune of $12.4MM to the city for the purchase of two hotels where the TIF was supposed to be the driver of redevelopment but wasn't. That's essentially moved that $25MM to approx. $37.5MM which is already outside of the SHED TIF mandate. We'd also have to go way into the legal annals of the city to discover the terms under which the CentrePoint lands were assembled and at what cost given that this was prior to the SHED TIF. And none of this accounts for the subsidy under which the MTS Centre was built and is maintained.
There are significant and ongoing tax breaks through the alteration of usage codes on the property tax assessment. Because the MTS Centre has been deemed a 'recreational' property as opposed to a 'commercial' property, the building receives almost 80% of it's property taxes in the form of a rebate. That alone is worth over a million dollars a year. The business taxes on the building are also fully refunded annually at between $250-$300K.
Beyond that, the entertainment tax rebates, the repurposing of 90 VLT machines to create another $4MM subsidy - the list goes on and on. Selinger's argument at the time was that we needed to subsidize the Thomsons and Chipmans to strengthen the long-term viability of the 'community asset' which is a whole new definition of 'community asset' where the profits created by the community roll up to the ownership.
Prev
Linear Mode
