Toronto: How to pay for TTC expansion

from NOW Toronto:



How to pay for TTC expansion
OneCity plan may get details wrong, but it lays track for the bigger discussion on how to pay for TTC expansion

By Adam Giambrone





Thanks to the OneCity plan unveiled last week by councillors Karen Stintz and Glenn De Baeremaeker, the issue of targeted taxes for transit expansion has been plunked on the table.

It’s not that the city hasn’t recently used its limited revenue base to fund transit (it paid for enviro assessments for Transit City and the Spadina subway extension); it’s just that using municipal cash for TTC additions has generally speaking been a no-go.

So we owe a debt to OneCity for triggering the debate, even though its proposed funding model, the Current Value Assessment uplift (CVA), could very well die on the vine.

The CVA idea is that as properties go up in value, revenue from increased assessment will be diverted to transit. Normally, reassessment doesn’t lead to automatic tax increases. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=187649