500% tax hike threatens historic Yonge Street

Toronto City Hall is helping both foreign and domestic developers denude Historic Yonge Street of its landmark merchants south of Bloor Street, replacing them with monster condos and cookie-cutter chain stores. It’s a disgrace.yonge tax grab

Councillor Krystin Wong-Tam backs local small merchants. Click here for the latest.

Implementing an unprecedented destructive 500 percent hike in property taxes on Yonge Street businesses, Mayor John Tory and city council will within the next series of 100% annual tax increases drive out unique and keynote merchants. The result will be to homogenize the once-celebrated streetscape to mediocrity.yonge tax grab

Imagine you have a business that in 2016 paid $20,000 in city taxes. For 2017 it is now forced to pay $39,000 and 2018 will take another monstrous price jump. It’s outrageous.yonge tax grab

Yonge Street would become just another outdoor strip mall enriching corporate property owners and evicting those small businesses whose creativity and sacrifices made Yonge Street a stunning asset to our city’s retail environment.yonge tax grab

Hello bland, goodbye unique. Farewell to a key part our city’s history and its present.

Toronto citizens can help reverse this extraordinary assault and salvage many of these landmark retailers who have received what amounts to their walking papers in the form of confiscatory tax hikes by a callous city council.

It doesn’t have to happen if enough of us speak out passionately to our local councillors and to the mayor’s office encouraging them to save Yonge Street’s retail uniqueness and flavour.

Bigness doesn’t have to trump individuality and enterprise. Toronto mustn’t be that sort of place.

The city must retract these confiscatory tax hikes and quit pandering to bigness and firms with crushing wealth, consummate greed and the capacity to purchase and degrade whatever catches their eyes.

— Frank Touby

The flyers shown below are sprouting up in shop windows all along the historic retail strip and are worthy of your attention and your comments to your city councillor and Mayor John Tory:

Click here or see below

 

One comment

  1. I guess you could sell the property and re-locate. Funny how the property values rising is so tramatizing.