8 Comments

So many more urgent issues for the city to address before supporting a sports venue when OSEG could go together with the SENS to build an arena big enough to accommodate the increasingly-popular Women’s Hockey as well as allow current Lansdowne to serve smaller teams.

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Why is no one organizing to block this? I want to expect more from the Glebe, considering they'll be the most hurt by this, but i guess not? 🤷‍♀️

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Believe me, people are pushing back as best they can. But Council is engineering a process that largely shuts people out.

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Oh i bet ppl are organizing through the "proper" channels. But we're up against a Trump idealogue with Sutcliffe. He laughs at the proper channels and will laugh at us trying to use them.

When i say block, i mean staging a sit-in during any meetings about lansdowne 2.0, contacting any companies the city works with, to let them know there will be heavy costs from the community that will make the project financially infeasible, if they attempt to work or build on Lansdowne 2.0.

The kinds of things that have historically worked to actually move the needle.

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Clearly the city is not taking on immediate financial risk and only going on a lot of unknown. 2066? Did the city look at other financial revenue models other than DCs (not my fave at all) and PT? What about TIF for Lansdowne? From the way it sounds, there wasn't a lot a thought and foresight in the process.

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And what happens when the cost comes in over $1 B?

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Service cuts, increased user fees to keep property taxes, and more debt.

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The 1% Lansdowne Tax is a way for the private sector, real estate developer-led Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) to access Ottawa's tax base to offset their annual and ongoing losses in managing Lansdowne Park. The use of a Public Private Partnership (PPP) financing model by OSEG and the City of Ottawa through the Lansdowne 2.0 initiative is a bad deal for taxpaying Ottawa residents. The cost to taxpayers is sure to increase beyond the 1% annual tax increase. It's not the responsibility of Ottawa's City Council to bail out real estate developers--especially during a municipal financial crisis.

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