City holds back on taxing owners of vacancies
The city had been planning to tax owners of commercial buildings with empty storefronts, but had decided that it’s not the right move during a pandemic.
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Ian 15:30 on 2020-05-08 Permalink
What a bunch of cowards. They can “suggest” or “recconend” whatever they want. This inaction has gone on for years. PM didn’t just get elected yesterday
david99 18:21 on 2020-05-08 Permalink
I disagree – this is the perfect time to quietly implement some radical changes, while the public is paying attention to everything but permitting and use regulations, but the changes we’d want to see would be bans on chain shops, and radical loosening of all sorts of rules about terrasses, tables outside, take-away (including drinks), nuking open container laws, privatizing various inspections, etc. We should even consider use segregation, and restrictive permitting altogether. Liquor licenses should be easy and fast to obtain, noise bylaws should be modified, streets should be closed.
Basically, we should make re-opening our local businesses – and starting new ones – as easy as possible, and making it as easy and cheap as possible for them to be successful.
But hammering the empty storefronts right not won’t do much except suck a bunch of money off the landlords, the market being what it is (or is anticipated to be).
Alison Cummins 06:31 on 2020-05-09 Permalink
Fire is the risk here. Buildings that are expensive to own and that don’t bring in enough revenue to cover costs are particularly susceptible to fire.
This isn’t a risk to take lightly when so many storefronts have residential units above.