Continuing on the theme that my blog now exists only to advertise my articles in The Hamilton Spectator…

Doug Ford raises Hamilton taxes (Wayback link)

Increased taxes are the inevitable result of Ford’s recent sprawl order for Hamilton, Simon Woodside writes.

What happens when the property taxes can’t cover the costs? Then they must go up, and so they inevitably do. And since taxes are citywide, that means that people in compact neighbourhoods will have to pay more, even though they don’t gain any of the dubious benefits of living in sprawl. This process is well-documented by the Strong Towns movement and author Chuck Marohn.

The Hamilton Spectator has an average daily readership of around 230,000 people, and I really get a kick out of being published in it. I actually interned there as a high school student in the 90s.

I’m really in debt to Strong Towns for this piece, that’s how I became aware of this quite annoying sprawl-cost and sprawl-tax problem. I hoped with this article to make it clear how this general phenomenon works and make it real for people who live here in Hamilton.