While the mayor’s executive committee voted this week to release the hounds (hire consultants at a cost of $3 mil) to find cost savings in the city’s operations, there seems no urgency on Ford’s part to pick up the $43 million (by one estimate) in back property taxes owed by the Toronto Port Authority.
There’s been no official response from the mayor’s office to a letter sent by CommunityAIR chair Brian Iler March 11 asking the mayor to apply his “considerable talent for getting things done” to collecting the money the TPA’s supposed to pay the city.
TPA president and CEO Geoffrey Wilson reacted Monday (March 21) with a letter of his own to the mayor. In it, Wilson says CommunityAIR is overstating the “tax arrears” (his quotes, not ours) and that it’s a mischaracterization to say there’s “money owing” the city by the TPA. But Wilson doesn’t deny there’s a dispute.
“Staff at the City and the Port Authority have the matter well in hand and there is every good reason to believe that this will be sensibly resolved soon,” Wilson writes.