Elections
Is Hamilton doing enough to support and encourage new investment in our older neighbourhoods? If not, what should the City be doing?
Responses to the question: "Is Hamilton doing enough to support and encourage new investment in our older neighbourhoods? If not, what should the City be doing?"
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4 Candidate Responses (top)
| Ward 06 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Brief Response | Full Response |
| Behrens, Chris | No | Hamilton is not encouraging enough new investment into our older neighbourhoods. Infrastructure is very important to a business owner, so are the costs related to business. I feel that we need to upgrade our crumbling infrastructure, lower realty taxes, and build a solid plan to encourage new business. |
| Jackson, Tom | Yes | I am a strong proponent of upgrading our aging infrastructure, particularly in our older neighbourhoods. We need to allocate sufficient resources in future budgets to ensure that these improvements are made. |
| Knowles, Steven | No | In response to the posted question, I do not feel we are doing an adequate job of promoting new investment in our older areas. One way we could ease new business into our communities would be with tax breaks.
I know corporate tax breaks are not everyone's favorite but this would allow new business to get established before paying into high tax accounts. An example of this is with our downtown. Property tax is high and for that reason many businesses just don't go there. If we offered a tax rebate to all leaseholders, provided they are still doing daily business, then it would ease there start up. We need to focus on the future and as such, we need to save people a little money today in order to help them prosper into tomorrow. |
| Yan, Nathalie Xian Yi | No | From my personal experience and observation of past 9 years, city definitely did not do enough to support and encourage of establishing new business and draw attention of investment. The city need sustainable business development plan, diversified industries with long term goal. I believe that many of the problems we have in the city are a result of using a band-aid approach rather than addressing the root cause of the problem.
Learning from other jurisdictions on sustainable growth, we would need an all-encompassing plan that would look at everything from water and sewage use, to neighborhood planning, transportation, energy positive waster disposal, biofuel and solar energy. Various schemes and funding from all three levels of government come and go, seemingly not play the "seed money" to get "fishing" skills to reach a long term result. Businesses already pay a lot more in property tax than residential taxpayers. I am frustrated in dealing with the unwillingness of city council to work with business owners on solutions to make our communities business friendly. There are huge waste of human resources potential in our city is the immigrant population. The city need foster a culture where council look at all aspects of planning and investing, not just the political consequences. |
Response Summary (top)
| Brief Response | Count | % of Total |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | 1 | 25.0% |
| No | 3 | 75.0% |
| Maybe | 0 | 0.0% |
2 Candidates Have Not Responded (top)
| Ward 06 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Febers, Michelle | ||
| Pecyna, Ed | ||
