Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I also think that the $4-5k 'subsidy' is a red herring. We're talking a miniscule percentage of a new house here. The amount of money is basically insignificant and honestly who cares if that new house in Skyview Ranch costs $355k instead of $350k? You could pass it all to the consumer and barely see a blip in costs or change the market significantly. This is again where it becomes a 'be careful what you wish for' situation I think. Put that through and you can't complain about sprawl or needing to fund fire stations or whatever else. Its a politically motivated way to attack the so-called slate.
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This is the point, not an unmanageable burden for the cost of an individual home (developers can also adjust densities to spread out the levy burden), but it is a significant amount of money for the public purse when it's accumulated across 7000 houses in a year. The Mayor has been talking about this for 3 years, it's not just politics during an election. The current agreement is much better, but the previous two five year agreements resulted in huge amounts of debt because they didn't include any water or sewer infrastructure, we're now facing big rises in water rates as a result.
http://www.calgarysun.com/2011/06/29...LOCK_QuickRead
No reason not to close this gap completely.