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88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

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Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#21

Post by patrickgzill »

celticjames wrote: post #19

Have you been to Mississauga? It's urban sprawl gone mad. It's one of the most bland, characterless strip mall excuses for a city in North America. The books may be balanced, but it's a joyless wasteland of big box stores and cookie cutter urban development.

If you look at a map at the "proper" scale, you will realize that it is really just a repeated set of streets, truly cookie cutter as you say.

Look at the curved roads which go between major streets - they all curve roughly the same way, and feed into the residential areas on the same pattern.

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#22

Post by jessep »

celticjames wrote: post #19

Have you been to Mississauga? It's urban sprawl gone mad. It's one of the most bland, characterless strip mall excuses for a city in North America. The books may be balanced, but it's a joyless wasteland of big box stores and cookie cutter urban development.

It sounds like Emeryville in the Bay Area.

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#23

Post by potatolicious »

9oliYQjP wrote: post #18

Woah woah woah. I live in Toronto. Mississauga is a suburb. They got out of debt by getting into bed with developers who went wild with unrestricted development. All this wouldn't be out of the norm if the mayor's son wasn't a developer and she had excused herself from meetings involving the city and his company. But she failed to disclose the conflict of interest and her son's company benefited. Mississauga is now a…

Additionally, being part of the lower class in Mississauga is probably one of the worst places in Canada to do so - public transit is practically non-existent, the city is a gigantic, congested network of ultra-wide boulevards. It is impossible to survive there without a car, thus further depressing the income of working class people.

Mississauga is a textbook example, IMHO, of a city gone wrong. It is the best Canadian example of the nightmarish, identical suburbia. Zero investment in infrastructure, absolutely no effort put into mass transport (despite being one of the most populated areas of Toronto)... of course you're running a surplus.

As compared to Toronto proper - a city with proper, extensive transit coverage, numerous financial woes (like any other city), yet a haven for working class folk.

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#24

Post by ellyagg »

philk wrote: post #4
techiferous wrote: post #2

What does being 88 years old have to do with anything? The title could've been "White Mayor Gets City Debt-free..." or "Female Mayor Gets City Debt-free..." One thing that annoys me is that for anyone over 80 years old, the first (and often only) thing that people notice is their age. When I get that old, I want people to see me first and my age second, not the other way around.

I for one find it encouraging when people that age are achieving something great by anyone's standards, not just the lax standards that society applies to the senescent. At the very least it makes old age less terrifying.

Your comment just reinforces what he's saying. Substitute "people who are black" for "people that age".

I remember when Morgan Freeman was on 60 Minutes. It was great: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1131418n

I'm never going to be black. But someday I hope to be 88, and it's going to be really damn annoying if everyone says "wow, that's pretty good...especially for an 88 year old!"

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#25

Post by philk »

ellyagg wrote: post #24
philk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one find it encouraging when people that age are achieving something great by anyone's standards, not just the lax standards that society applies to the senescent. At the very least it makes old age less terrifying.

Your comment just reinforces what he's saying. Substitute "people who are black" for "people that age". I remember when Morgan Freeman was on 60 Minutes. It was great: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1131418n I'm never going to be black. But someday I hope to be 88, and it's going to be really damn annoying if everyone says "wow, that's pretty good...especially for an 88 year old!"

Not really. Being black doesn't make you slower, less able or more susceptible to disease. Aging does.

>> But someday I hope to be 88, and it's going to be really damn annoying if everyone says "wow, that's pretty good...especially for an 88 year old!"

If you're 88[1], still accomplishing meaningful things and don't have cancer or dementia you're doing brilliantly and shouldn't care what people are saying about you.

[1] Substitute future impressive age assuming life expectancy continues to increase.

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#26

Post by akamaka »

I live in Toronto, and my understanding is that Mississauga's budget surplus is largely due to lot levies paid by property developers. Building a new house means paying around $20k in infrastructure fees (for new roads, sewers, etc.)

Most of the development of Mississauga happened from the 1970s onwards, so they are still in the honeymoon. I've talked to urban planning students about this, and the general consensus seems to be that they are going to be fucked when the time comes to start maintaining and replacing the infrastructure.

It's not quite as bad as some of the urban sprawl in the USA (I've seen Cleveland), but still a textbook example of short-term planning and unsustainable development.

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#28

Post by teeja »

potatolicious wrote: post #23
9oliYQjP wrote: post #18

Woah woah woah. I live in Toronto. Mississauga is a suburb. They got out of debt by getting into bed with developers who went wild with unrestricted development. All this wouldn't be out of the norm if the mayor's son wasn't a developer and she had excused herself from meetings involving the city and his company. But she failed to disclose the conflict of interest and her son's company benefited. Mississauga is now a…

Additionally, being part of the lower class in Mississauga is probably one of the worst places in Canada to do so - public transit is practically non-existent, the city is a gigantic, congested network of ultra-wide boulevards. It is impossible to survive there without a car, thus further depressing the income of working class people. Mississauga is a textbook example, IMHO, of a city gone wrong . It is the best Cana…

Putting a full set of electric buses on those streets would still leave a big chunk of that $700mil in the bank.

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#29

Post by Estragon »

9oliYQjP wrote: post #18

Woah woah woah. I live in Toronto. Mississauga is a suburb. They got out of debt by getting into bed with developers who went wild with unrestricted development. All this wouldn't be out of the norm if the mayor's son wasn't a developer and she had excused herself from meetings involving the city and his company. But she failed to disclose the conflict of interest and her son's company benefited. Mississauga is now a…

Thanks for explaining this. I knew there had to be more to it than the author's free-market ideology.

Re: 88yr Old Mayor Gets City Debt-free & Puts 700M Cash In The Bank.

#30

Post by JimmyL »

teeja wrote: post #27

Wow. That is one cool mayor. And debt-free, just like North Dakota!

Also interesting: she doesn't campaign for re-election any more. She files the paperwork to be a candidate, and that's it. She refuses to accept any donations (saying instead people should donate to charity), does effectively no campaign events, and gets re-elected with 90%+ each time.
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