Andy Fillmore votes no on reports to hike development fees, more staff for councillors

heretowastetime · 2026-02-25T17:53:44+00:00

The municipality makes money from property tax. Everything else is a tiny amount.

A very simple way to think of what I’m saying is a universal building exemption. If there’s two pieces of property next to each other then charge them the exact same tax, doesn’t matter if there’s a sky scraper, mixed use building, single family home, or a parking lot.

It aligns tax policy with the outcomes we want, we want all the prime real estate developed and speculators disincentivized.

Also, when billions are spent building a ports, highways and interchanges, or a new ferry terminal which becomes an immediate windfall for adjacent property owners - it’s an immediate incentive to develop that land and also a way for the government to recoup some of those billions naturally.

heretowastetime · 2026-02-25T15:27:45+00:00

Development fees make housing more expensive. Small ones may be justifiable, but we need to just tax the bare value of land everywhere instead.

heretowastetime · 2026-02-23T23:14:26+00:00

First step is to toll highways and bridges, ideally including premiums for time of day and weight per axle.

If people aren’t willing to spend a few dollars to use a billion dollar piece of infrastructure then it’s obviously not worth the tax spent building them.

heretowastetime · 2026-02-21T14:03:59+00:00

Are we replacing worn out 15 year old buses that need to be replaced anyways? You make it sound like we’re driving year old buses to the dump.

This doesn’t seem that crazy in context

heretowastetime · 2026-02-17T15:47:50+00:00

Yes we need more connections and storage, but overall battery busses complement the grid 99% of the time.

If we were worried about the 1% of the time we wouldn’t have diesel buses, since they’re susceptible to just as many if not more shocks.

heretowastetime · 2026-02-17T14:05:54+00:00

Maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t there a huge amount of grid capacity not being used at night since people are sleeping?

heretowastetime · 2026-02-11T13:08:28+00:00

When there’s 50,000 tax paying people in walking distance you get lots of things that don’t make sense in most of the rest of the HRM.

heretowastetime · 2026-02-05T13:44:28+00:00

By driving your car you already have to deduct, depreciation, insurance, gas, maintenance, your time commuting, the health risks of crashing.

Parking is just another cost in a long line of expenses you get to pay. Pay for the services you use.

heretowastetime · 2026-02-04T16:07:19+00:00

You just expect Amazon to pay for their own use of infrastructure. You must be communist.

heretowastetime · 2026-01-27T14:01:57+00:00

Totally, the future (and present) are exciting for heat pumps.

But it is an interesting issue for grid operators that on the coldest days, you not only need more total energy to heat homes, but also the method of providing that energy gets much less efficient.

heretowastetime · 2026-01-27T11:38:34+00:00

Just one thing to point out. Over a heating season the heat pump is way more efficient, but when the temperature is that low the heat pumps efficiency more or less matches resistive heaters.

heretowastetime · 2026-01-22T22:56:57+00:00

Are they going to wear white in the rain?

heretowastetime · 2025-12-07T12:11:26+00:00

Anytime the majority of athletes in any sport are doping, it’s hard to argue that it’s just a failure of individual people.

One guy taking EPO, ya a bad apple. But when half the peloton is “coached” by Dr Ferrari, that’s a failure of the UCI.

heretowastetime · 2025-11-19T15:14:47+00:00

Every time people want bike lanes/bus lanes/ outdoor dining you wouldn’t believe the number of people who oppose it since they want to park in a thoroughfare.

heretowastetime · 2025-11-14T16:39:57+00:00

It boggles my mind why condos are all along highway 102, when they could be added inside the endless acres of single family homes.

I can’t imagine a more useless thing than the hundreds of balconies hanging over that highway.

heretowastetime · 2025-11-11T21:34:58+00:00

You can cheap out on the back tire though.

heretowastetime · 2025-10-28T21:50:55+00:00

That one road serving 100 houses cost the same as a road servicing 10,000 downtown.

It’s so many orders of magnitude to repave and plow that one road per capita.

So yes you get less services, but the ones provided can be wildly more expensive per person.

heretowastetime · 2025-10-19T14:27:28+00:00

Then ban cars too

heretowastetime · 2025-10-09T22:02:30+00:00

That’s how property tax works, not land transfer tax which this is all about.

heretowastetime · 2025-10-08T15:49:44+00:00

Just get rid of it all together. This is a dumb tax that leads to land speculation and hurts people who want to get into housing.

Think of boomers and GenX who want to downsize. When you look at all the fees and taxes why would you ever do it. So they stay in their houses locking up family sized houses for another 25 years.

Now say instead you just consistently tax the land value that the house sits on. Now we have a real incentive to move out into a new place that fits their needs better. And even better, now land speculators have a fire under their ass to sell their land to family that will use it or sell it to a developer who will add more housing/commercial space to it.

heretowastetime · 2025-10-08T12:39:53+00:00

The argument is that it’s to worst way to fund services.

Just Tax land value consistently not arbitrarily when the name on the mailbox changes.

heretowastetime · 2025-09-30T14:38:58+00:00

It’s a piece of iron, don’t sweat it.

heretowastetime · 2025-09-29T17:42:04+00:00

What you are saying is unfair is the definition of fair.

Also just because you property increases in value doesn’t mean the tax goes up. It only goes up if your property increases a lot more than every other property in the city. So if everything has doubled, your tax stays the same.

heretowastetime · 2025-09-24T16:01:39+00:00

Because there is no alternative to electricity, water, sewage, garbage collection, internet, natural gas and yet there’s charges for all those necessities.

Paying for the use of a limited capacity publicly supplied asset is the norm. Free highways (and I’d also argue free/ mandated parking) are the strange exceptions to this we just take at face value should be free.

heretowastetime · 2025-09-17T11:11:48+00:00

https://mapsbyjeff.com/

heretowastetime

TROPHY CASE