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Milton grew 71% in five years, thanks mostly to its small-town charm and low property taxes

Welcome to Milton, the middle kingdom. A town that still boasts a mill pond.

A place where would-be residents can choose between homes with verandas on Court St. or subdivision living near big box stores.

Thirty minutes from Toronto, its backyard is the Niagara Escarpment.

“It’s small enough that it feels like a small town, but there’s everything here that you need,” said Holly Young who, with husband Shawn and their 11-month-old daughter Makayla, moved here last fall.

Judging by the latest census results, plenty of others, much like Goldilocks, also seem to consider Milton just right. While other GTA municipalities are losing middle-income earners, Milton’s gaining and can lay claim to being the quintessential middle-class community.

Of the entire Golden Horseshoe, it has the lowest percentage of people whose total income was less than $25,000 – 38 per cent. Nearly 56 per cent earn between $25,000 and $99,000, the highest in the area.

The town’s also seen some big changes – besides the arrival of Wal-Mart or the expansion of the “Milton Hilton,” as the Maplehurst “superjail” is affectionately known. Milton grew 71 per cent between 2001 and 2006, from 31,471 to 53,939.

Gordon Krantz, who’s been Milton’s mayor for 28 years and remembers when it had just 2,000 people, believes “several different factors” explain its drawing power.

“We do have the lowest property tax rate in the GTA, save and except for Toronto. That is a factor. I know that,” he said. “But we also have one of the lowest crime rates in Halton and the education system here is very good.”

Janice Syan, 30, an elementary school teacher who was grocery shopping on Main St. late yesterday with her husband, Bal, 29, an architect, and their son, Jeevan, 18 months, said lower property taxes were a factor in their decision to move from Mississauga.

But “cheaper houses, that’s what really attracted us here,” she said. Bal, who commutes to downtown Toronto, said it’s quicker for him to get to the GO Train station in Milton than it was in Mississauga.

At the opposite end of Main St., at the co-op known as the Country Depot, 16 newly hatched chicks huddled under a warming lamp. Up the street, you could sip a cappuccino at A Country Mile gift shop and café.

Not so long ago, it was a fried chicken outlet. Yes, Milton’s gone upscale – but, like in most Canadian small towns, the regulars still gather daily for a cup.

“You talk to some people (about the town’s surging population and popularity) and they say, `It’s not Milton anymore,’” said café owner Kimberly English. “But you still have that warm, fuzzy thing.”

– by Tracey Taylor, Staff Reporter at the Toronto Star

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog

I was able to take sometime tonight to attend a Milton Town Council meeting and as the old saying goes…

Breaking news!!!!

Milton CAO Mario Belvedere is making a presentation to council about the proposed education village in Milton. During his report he made official that Wilfred Laurier University has entered into a memorandum of uderstanding to work on bringing a campus to Milton.

The proposed site would be on Tremaine Road south of Derry Road and north of Brittania on the west side.

There’s still a lof of work to be done to get this rolling more but its the first step to bringing a university to our town…

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

How much tax on a $380,000 house in the GTA? Location plays big part in your tax bill…

Homeowners who live in the aging industrial city of Oshawa pay the highest property taxes in the GTA, while those who live in Toronto and Milton – the country’s fastest-growing community – pay among the lowest municipal taxes, a Toronto Star survey has found.

As Toronto City Council begins final debate today on a budget that includes a proposed 3.75 per cent tax hike, we’re taking a comparative look at tax rates and what drives them in the 25 municipalities that make up Greater Toronto.

The large disparity in property tax rates across the GTA is an indication of the very different challenges faced by the 25 municipalities that make up the most densely populated region of Canada.

The survey showed, among other things:

Oshawa’s high taxes are a testament to the unique difficulties faced by a city best known for General Motors as it grapples with a confluence of aging infrastructure, low property values and increased capital costs.

Homeowners in Durham Region municipalities such as Ajax, Pickering, Whitby, Oshawa and Clarington continue to pay significantly higher taxes than those in Peel, York and Halton – regions that also seem better positioned to draw business and commercial taxes.

Toronto manages to have it both ways, charging both the GTA’s highest industrial-commercial taxes and the region’s lowest residential property taxes.

Many rural municipalities, such as Uxbridge, Scugog and Georgina, struggle with high taxes while facing the problem of a small assessment base (both residential and industrial-commercial) and little prospect for growth as a result of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan and the newly protected Greenbelt.

The survey also found that Toronto and Oshawa, which represent extremes on the tax spectrum, are grappling with the underlying issues in their own unique ways.

In Toronto, where the financial burden is borne more heavily by the commercial-industrial sector, a 15-year plan that began in 2005 is gradually shifting more of the tax responsibility onto homeowners.

Meanwhile, Oshawa has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure investment plan, especially in its downtown core, hoping to capitalize on growth from new business and families seeking modestly priced homes.

One reason city-by-city comparisons are difficult is that the same amount of money buys “less house” in Toronto than in a place like Oshawa. On the other hand, a home with equivalent assessed value draws a far bigger tax bill in Oshawa than Toronto.

So the Star compared property taxes in two ways: First, by comparing what’s considered an “average” home within each of the region’s 25 municipalities; second, on a single property value ($380,000) applied across all the municipalities.

Torontonians pay taxes to a single entity: the city. In other places, residents pay both a city and a regional tax. For the sake of comparison, we blended those taxes proportionately. (The education tax, which is uniform and set by the province, appears on the municipal tax bill but isn’t included in this comparison.)

Oshawa regards an “average” home there to be valued at $275,000. At that assessed value, the homeowner will pay $4,157.56 in taxes in 2008, the Star found. That is:

$1,350 more per year than for an average Mississauga home ($365,000)

$939.90 more than for an average home in Vaughan ($412,070), and

$1,901.31 more than for an average Toronto home ($369,300).

We also compared taxes based on an across-the-board home value of $380,000, a figure chosen randomly by the Star.

On a home of that value in Oshawa, the owner’s municipal/regional taxes would be $5,744.86. That’s $2,822.01 more than on a similarly priced Mississauga home and $3,423.34 more than on a similarly priced Toronto home.

Chris Brown, Oshawa’s director of finance, acknowledges that residents in his city face significantly higher taxes than others, but says it’s caused by a confluence of events, including low property values and the fact that the city has made a long-term decision to invest heavily in infrastructure projects.

“We are in a major investment time frame right now,” says Brown. “There’s a cost to that, but we hope there’s a payoff down the road.”

The investments include a plan to revitalize the downtown core with the $45 million GM Centre, the $39 million Legend Centre, a provincial courthouse and a new fire hall.

Oshawa has even implemented special incentives to encourage companies to build residential and commercial buildings downtown – waiving lucrative development charges in hopes that benefits will come later.

“This type of investment attracts assessment,” says Brown. “If assessment increases, individual taxes could go down in the future.”

The situation is vastly different in other suburban municipalities, such as Milton, where booming development is helping to pay for new infrastructure. Its location along Highway 401 between Toronto and the U.S. border makes Milton attractive to business.

Milton’s population grew by 71.4 per cent in the previous five years, according to Statistics Canada figures released last year, making it the fastest-growing community in Canada, while Oshawa grew by a paltry 1.8 per cent, only slightly higher than built-out Toronto’s 0.9 per cent increase.

Companies like Magna, which established a stamping plant in Milton, and Whirlpool, which recently picked the area as its new distribution facility for the eastern seaboard, boost the community’s bottom line.

“We feel blessed,” says Milton Mayor Gordon Krantz. “We are well positioned geographically. We are three hours from the Windsor border.”

Ajax Mayor Steve Parish says one reason Durham Region’s suburban municipalities have higher taxes is that the region has not been as successful in attracting a healthy industrial-commercial tax base.

“In the case of places like Mississauga and Vaughan, one real driver that attracts industry is the proximity to the airport,” Parish adds. “It’s a big driver.”

Milton’s commercial business tax rate is just 2.32 per cent, the lowest in the GTA, while Vaughan’s is 2.39 per cent.

Oshawa’s commercial business tax rate stands at 3.58 per cent, much closer to Toronto’s 4.09 per cent.

– by Phinjo Gombu of the Toronto Star

Patricia Eales will take a petition of 8,000 names to a GO Transit board meeting next week. She wants partial refunds when trains are 20 minutes late.

Oakville rider who began online petition criticizing rail service has become a powerful voice for change

They’re late for work and late coming home to pick up the kids from daycare.

Now GO riders are going to be charged more for what many are calling “atrocious” and “abysmal” service, says an Oakville woman who has become the voice of frustrated commuters across the region.

Pat Eales will take an 8,000-name online petition to the March 14 meeting of the GO board of directors. She plans to ask the board to postpone the fare increase planned for March 15 until GO can run its trains on time.

“Most of the people I rode the trains with, we felt our complaints were being dropped into a bottomless bucket. Now at least people think there’s a collective voice,” said Eales yesterday.

The petition asks GO to refund 50 per cent of fares when trains are late by 20 minutes or more, and to provide better notification of delays.

“We don’t mind paying a good fare for a good service. Just give us good service,” she said.

Eales started the petition Feb. 11, after train delays made her late arriving to work five days in a row, at a job she’d only started in November.

A busy single mother, Eales says an earlier train would put her at the office more than an hour ahead of her start time, but she wouldn’t be able to leave early.

Driving doesn’t make sense because by the time she learns of delays, she’s usually on the train platform, having paid her fare.

“There are obviously people who agree with her,” said GO spokesperson Stephanie Sorensen. “GO and the board are taking her concerns very seriously.”

The transit agency reported that 83 per cent of its trains ran on time last year, down from about 90 per cent in 2006.

Although it’s adding 27 faster locomotives that can pull an extra two cars, that won’t have an impact until later this year, after crews are trained and platforms lengthened throughout the system.

The only new locomotive running so far is temporarily assigned to the Lakeshore line.

Twelve-car trains that can accommodate an additional 300 people each won’t be in service until the summer and will be brought onto the Milton line first, Sorensen said.

Eales’s petition has helped “because now people are paying attention to the situation,” said Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who has persuaded Queen’s Park to appoint a customer service expert to a vacancy on the GO board.

“We need somebody who knows how to deal with people. We need somebody at the decision-making level looking at this through a customer service lens,” he said.

“You can’t have an economy the size of Toronto’s and not have a good train system. It doesn’t make any sense.

“If you look at any other jurisdiction around the world, it’s just not optional,” said Flynn.

– By Tess Kalinowski, Transportation Reporter for the Toronto Star

UPDATE: GO SAYS NO 11,000 TIMES

Board refuses to grant fare rebates for delayed trains despite petition from dissatisfied riders

They listened, but Pat Eales isn’t convinced GO Transit’s board of directors heard the deafening hue and cry of frustrated commuters demanding better service and a refund when trains are late.

“They just kept bringing up the same old excuses – the weather, the switches – and that it wasn’t their fault,” the Oakville mother of two said after tabling copies of an online petition at yesterday’s board meeting, supported by almost 11,000 dissatisfied riders.

The petition called for a 50 per cent refund on fares when trains are delayed 20 minutes or more. Eales also asked the board to freeze fare hikes until trains run as scheduled.

But her requests fell on deaf ears. A 15-cent-per-ride fare increase on a single adult ticket goes into effect today. Board chair Peter Smith confirmed there will be no refunds, something he said would spell disaster for the system in the throes of a major expansion.

GO Transit relies on the fare box for operating funds, so essentially riders themselves would be picking up the cost of the refunds.

Eales, however, did walk away with assurances that an advisory board will be established to handle service and reliability issues.

Smith later invited Eales to join that committee. She hasn’t yet decided if she will.

A plan for an improved communication system to advise riders of cancellations and delays was also approved.

During her presentation, Eales called on the board to fix glitches, even those that are out of its control. Tracks, switches and crews are under the jurisdiction of CN and CP, which own the rails GO uses.

“Stop thanking us for our patience and apologizing for any inconvenience you may have caused us. `Sorry’ doesn’t help when we are late for work or late home at night.”

Eales, a single mother of two teens who lives in Bronte, told the Star her patience with the transit system ran out in February after GO problems made her late five days in a row for her new job as an executive assistant at a not-for-profit academic research centre. She had tried emailing GO Transit authorities to complain about the system but got the run-around. She filled out a ridership survey but no one contacted her.

Unless the system becomes more reliable, she warned the board, transit users will get back into their cars.

Eales urged riders to take advantage of the “silent rebate” available at the customer service kiosk at Union Station. Staff offer vouchers when riders complain about late or cancelled trains.

With ridership increasing by 10,000 a day over last year, “we’re the victims of our own success,” Smith said in response, noting that improvements are on the horizon to ease the crunch.

About 170,000 people ride the trains on a typical weekday. “We don’t have the capacity on our trains or lines,” he said. “We’re building that capacity, but it takes a long time.”

Frances Chung, GO’s director of financial services, reported on major work underway to improve the aging signal and switching system. A 33-kilometre third track is being built on the Lakeshore corridor from Hamilton to Oshawa to increase capacity and reduce delays. New locomotives capable of pulling 12 cars are coming on board, as are new bi-level coaches. Crew staffing is also being increased.

Eales’ petition is to go to the Ontario Legislature next week.

– by Leslie Ferenc of the Toronto Star

The global movement to step out of the artificial light and into complete darkness – to draw attention to climate change – is snowballing across the country.

Since the launch of the Toronto Star’s countdown to Earth Hour, cities across the country have been signing up. Montreal has announced its intention to join up and Sarnia, Ontario has also been welcomed to the campaign.

“I’ve been a great believer that governments are too slow on moving on these issues,” said Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley. “Here is a way of getting a lot of people involved at no cost.”

Participation is as simple as turning off your lights – between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on March 29.

Bradley pointed out that Earth Hour is not all about sacrifice. “I also think it’s going to have a very positive impact on national unity because Canadians from coast to coast can all shut off Don Cherry all at the same time.”

Among those Canadians are the residents of Halton Region and Mississauga who also officially committed to the project this week.

Mississauga Councillor George Carlson said since the campaign was announced Mayor Hazel McCallion and the 11 councillors were 100 per cent on board.

“In fact some of them wanted to jump in with both feet and do things like turning out the street lights and shutting down recreation centres,” he said.

Their plan is to work with local environmental groups to get the message out and shut down as many lights as possible, including many at City Hall, he said.

“We unanimously supported it, which is a nice change for council.”

Sarnia, as Bradley points out, already has several green initiatives on the go. It has the largest solar farm in North America and one of the largest biofuel plants in the country, he said.

Bradley said if people were really realistic about problems with power shortages and air quality, “I could see an hour every day.”

– by Emily Mathieu of the Toronto Star

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

A couple of days ago, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released his third budget. This is something unheard of for a minority government being able to have this many budgets without being defeated. In many cases, they’re doing a good job and while most Canadians don’t want an election, they seem comfortable with our MP’s in this minority situation.

Here are a couple of items that I pulled from the budget. All in all, it is a pretty sound plan for the coming years. Some of the big highlights for towns and cities are as follows:

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

The following post is by Mike Cluett. Please visit Mike Cluett’s Milton blog site here:

At this point, Milton doesn’t have all day GO Train service to Toronto with only a few trains in the morning and a few in the evening. Many of the commuters that use the Milton station come from outside the area in Cambridge, Guelph and northern parts of Oakville and Burlington. The provincial government recently announced a large investment in GO Train services of $100 million dollars.

Unfortunately none of those dollars have made it to Milton…

To continue reading this column, go to Mike Cluett’s Milton Blog.

Robert Sager of Milton was rushed through training for a $9 an hour temporary job and, on his second shift, crushed by a runaway forklift.

Workplace safety rules allow companies to keep spotless ratings even if poorly trained temps are injured or killed

Ontario companies that use an army of temporary workers are hiding a dirty secret behind their glowing safety records.

That’s because the province’s worker insurance program protects the company job sites where accidents occur, yet gives big financial penalties to the temporary agency that sent the worker to the job.

A loophole in the rules of the province’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) system is to blame.

As a result, companies that use a lot of temporary workers have no incentive to clean up their act because their “experience rating” – a financial calculation based on a company’s health and safety record – is not affected when a temp is hurt. Depending on company size, the firm can escape hundreds-of-thousands- or millions-of-dollars in annual payments.

The situation is “fundamentally wrong,” said WSIB chair Steve Mahoney, after the Toronto Star presented the results of its investigation. “To allow a company that is using temp agencies to simply skip the responsibility for safety is not in the interest of the workers and that is our main focus.”

Mahoney will ask the provincial labour ministry to fix the problem, which would require a change to legislation. The impact, if a change is made, will be significant. One in five workers in Ontario is a temp, employed by one of the 1,300 or more agencies in the province that use them.

Cases uncovered by the Star as part of an ongoing investigation into worker safety reveal factories, retail shipping firms, and other companies that did not train a temporary worker properly or take safety precautions, leading to severe injuries, crushed bodies, broken bones and, sometimes, death.

“I’ve seen companies get great safety ratings when we know that temps are injured there all the time,” said Suzanne McInerney, a vice-president at Staffing Edge, one of the largest temporary work firms in Ontario. Her firm, and others, want the province to pass legislation that would make injuries the shared responsibility with the places people work – not just the company that places them in the job.

Robert Sager agrees.

A runaway forklift crushed the 53-year-old Milton man in July 2005. He had been sent by temporary agency Kelly Services to an Exel Canada distribution plant for the $9 an hour job. Exel rushed him through training and he was put to work immediately at a Brantford warehouse.

“I felt pressured because at that point in time I really needed a job,” Sager said.

A few minutes into his second shift, the forklift he was driving accelerated backwards, threw him out and pinned him against a steel rack.

“I remember thinking `Oh God, I’m dead.’ I tried to call out for help and I could hardly get it out of my voice. I remember hearing someone say `Sager, are you all right?’ and then I blacked out.”

They discovered the extent of the damage at the hospital: a crushed pelvis, a torn urethra, ripped vertebrae, ruptured bowel, crushed kidneys, a head injury and testicles swollen tight with blood. He had three heart attacks immediately after the accident.

Two-and-a-half years later, the damage remains. He can barely walk, has memory loss, and needs help with everything from bathing to using the toilet. A nurse comes daily to change a dressing in his chest.

Under current rules, Kelly Services would face a hike in its annual workplace insurance payments, not Exel. However, neither firm would provide details of their case to the Star.

The Ministry of Labour investigated and laid charges; Exel pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that Sager was sufficiently experienced and was fined $80,000 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Kelly Services is contesting safety act charges that it did not properly prepare Sager for the job.

The fine for Exel was a one-time payout that does not affect the company’s WSIB safety rating. A serious injury like Sager’s, with ensuing medical costs over many years, would significantly raise a company’s annual payments.

To better understand the WSIB, here is how the system works.

Ontario’s workers’ compensation system began in 1915, when workers gave up the right to sue companies in return for long-term compensation in a no-fault insurance program paid for by employers.

In Ontario, most companies pay into a worker insurance system to cover medical, salary and retraining costs for injured workers.

Each company pays the WSIB an annual insurance premium depending on the type of work. A mining company pays more than a white-collar office because miners are more often injured, and the injuries are more serious.

How safe a company is relative to other similar companies helps them save money. A good “experience rating” means they pay less; a bad rating they pay more. A company that pays an annual WSIB premium of $5 million could either save $1 million or pay an additional $1 million, depending on its record.

Worker advocates say that the policy behind the loophole needs to be changed.

“It is outrageous that this situation even exists,” said Wayne Samuelson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

“If a company wants to avoid getting on the radar of the labour ministry, they can just offload their accidents onto the temp agency … that way their record gets attached to the agency.”

WSIB data released to the Star does not differentiate temp companies from firms that hire salaried employees, so it is impossible to tell how many temp workers report injuries each year. However, by looking at 200 known temporary firms in the data, we spotted a 32 per cent increase in injuries, from 5,345 in 2001 to 7,075 in 2005, the most recent information available. Industry experts say that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

What pains those who run staffing agencies is that the WSIB has no way of identifying companies where temp workers are frequently injured.

“It doesn’t even go on their record,” said Linda Ford, president of Temporary Measures. “Even if we put their name down when we file our paperwork, the WSIB does not have a way of recording it, so there is nothing to red flag the companies for their safety record.”

McInerney, of Staffing Edge, said some companies give temp workers the most strenuous jobs, without proper training.

“Companies push off those jobs to the staffing companies because they know there will be accidents and therefore their safety rate is kept clean and ours is not,” she said.

As a result, temp agencies typically pay double the premiums compared to companies that do the same work, McInerney said.

In 2006, the WSIB launched what it called its “boldest social marketing” campaign ever in a bid to one day reduce workplace fatalities and injuries to zero.

Staffing Edge president Lou Duggan saw an opening and wrote to WSIB chair Mahoney last year, asking for him to fix the temporary worker issue.

“We feel that lost time injuries should not only reflect the staffing firm’s frequency of injuries but should as well target the client site locations where the injuries occurred,” Duggan wrote.

“Instilling a greater accountability for (lost time injuries) on the client site is the key. This change would engage the management at workplaces and support your goal for a safer work environment.”

Duggan received a reply from the WSIB saying the issue would be studied, but nothing changed.

Yesterday, board chair Mahoney said in an interview that he would meet with the provincial labour ministry in two weeks and propose a change to legislation that would close the loophole.

– by Moira Welsh of the Toronto Star