Learning Goal: I’m working on a finance question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.

I will share the assignment and notes for the class.

ASSIGNMENT DETAILS

Congratulations, you have recently been hired as an analyst for the City of Toronto reporting to the City Manager. The upcoming Council meeting has several important items up for consideration. Your job is to write a summary briefing note and a recommendation to Council for FOUR (your choice on exactly which four – but you must pick at least one from each of the each of the three groups) of the following items:

Group 1

1. Council is considering increasing the Land Transfer Tax. What is your advice?

2. Council is proposing a significant property tax rebate for seniors. What is your advice?

3. Council is voting on whether to introduce tolls on the Gardiner and Don Valley Parkway Expressways. What is your advice?

Group 2

4. The City and Province of Ontario have begun negotiating on the kinds of services that are best delivered by the province and those are best delivered by the City. What is your advice?

5. The City has received bids from waste contracting companies, nearby cities, and existing city employees to provide waste pickup for a part of the city. What is your advice?

6. Our outside workers that provide waste services, parks and recreation, and street cleaning are threatening to strike. What is your advice?

Group 3

7. The province has recently introduced amendments to the Planning Act requiring the city to set a Community Benefits Charge. What is your advice?

8. The province has recently allowed cities to adopt an inclusionary zoning bylaw. What is your advice?

9. The province has just frozen the amount that the city can collect in development charges, but capital expenses keep rising. What is your advice?

Each briefing note summary should cover a brief history of the issue (graded out of 5 for completeness and accuracy). Your recommendation should clearly indicate your suggested path of action (graded out of 5 for the clarity of your suggestion), along with the considerations (the good and bad effects of your recommendation – each graded out of 5 for a total of 10 for the accuracy and completeness of your answer) that Council should know about regarding that choice. Feel free to write the memo on topics like inclusionary zoning either as though the city doesn’t have a bylaw or in light of the current bylaw.

The shorter your memo, the better. Each briefing note must be no longer than 500 words – write as succinctly as possible while addressing all key points. (Style and clarity of writing will be graded out of 5. Memos longer than 500 words, measured from the first word of arguments after your first title and headings to the last period ahead of references, will receive 0 on style marks). I do not count a reference section in the word count, so you can provide references either as in-text summaries (with details below the main text) or the details of the references in footnotes or end-notes. I do not care about the style of references.

Some (far longer than what you should provide) examples of briefing notes are here:

Requirements: As long as everything has been answered well