We own a new Building!
Did you hear the good news?
We are now the proud new owners of the Nortel buildings in Calgary. Not only the two buildings but we also get the land underneath them with our purchase.
How much you ask ? Well we picked them up for 97 million dollars and apparently we out bid three other bidders for this sale.
According to the city budget the increase to our property tax will result in a 24$ a month increase per house hold (thats just for 2009).
According to stats Canada 2006 data (most up to data I could find, all though I seem to remember the statistician threatening me by law to give up my information just a few months ago.) there are 1,067,665 house holds in Calgary.This increase to our property tax is roughly 25,623,936$ extra a month to the city of Calgary.
Lets do the math. 97 million divided by 25.623 million a month gives us 3.78 months. So almost 25% of our new tax hike is going to buy us the Nortel building plus its land. Is this purchase really a necessity to the city? When toying with the idea of the tax hike council asked city planners to chop any fat they could find to save us money how come this was never chopped? It could have saved us 25% of this years increase.
Remember taxes rarely get rolled back what will we buy next year?
http://www.ward11calgary.ca/news/2008/november/2009-2011-business-plan-and-budget-release.pdf
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil123f-eng.htm
http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/story.html?id=1585609
