Don't Vote! no wait, DO VOTE! ;)

[kbf_private_joker]

Socially liberal. Which brings financial liberalness along with it.

Ottawa is a mixed bag. The mayor here is fiscally conservative and somewhat socially conservative as well, but most of city council is very liberal, which is a problem. We have problems with roads and infrastructure and things the city absolutely must take care of, but they insist on "funding" the arts with $60 million a year. Housing in Ottawa is expensive. You can't get a simple, run of the mill detached family home for less than $200,000. that's like 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, smaller than average house. To live comfortably, it depends on how much debt besides a mortgage you have. My wife has a pretty big student loan, and dishes out about $320/month on it. But we live comfortably. Combined, we make about $85K, with no car and living in a Condo Townhouse, which are much cheaper to buy than a house. You could get by on less if you don't have any major debt apart from the mortgage. The property tax rate here is 1.24% (0.98% for the city and 0.24% for the school board). On a house assessed at $279,000, that would be $3557. It wouldn't be as bad if the city wasn't wasting money on stupid crap constantly. This end of the Ontario is more expensive than the areas west of Toronto for some reason. Maybe because we aren't as close to horrible Toronto as they are

Sounds like a nice place to live. It also drives me crazy when tax money (my money) is spent on crap like that. Things like museums and art galleries should be privately funded.

[E-Day]

Well, because this is tha capital of the country, just about every museum and gallery is looked after by the federal government. As are a lot of the parks and some roadways. Yet this city still manages to always need more and more money even though they don't have to look after these things. I don't mind museums being publicly funded, so long as the museum is useful (museum of history, nature, science, civilization, etc are all excellent).

[Crazylightsaber]

I was down with the video until Ellen De-Generate pop up on it.