Or he could, now hear me out for a second, aim taxes higher than 2.5%.
I’m pretty annoyed that this election is going to “more garbage bins, no improvements”
This city needs some ambition. Look at Mamdani, why the hell can’t we have that!?
For the same reason NYC won’t have that in 4 years. Though I agree we can do better than the current crop.
We really should start making our politicians sign legally binding contracts, instead of letting them “pledge” to do things they have no intention of doing.
Come up with a real plan, that actually works by the numbers, and sign a contract to get it done.
I don’t see how that would be enforceable at any level, as I can’t think of a plan that is without the need for external cooperation.
Municipal politics is especially challenging for an idea like this. Municipalities operate under rules the province sets. That’s how they were able to remap wards and change the number of councillors in Toronto, for example. Strong Mayor powers are extremely limited, given to a few cities, and are designed to make it easier for cities to push forward the goals of the province despite local opposition.
Further, but more of a personal opinion, I don’t think candidates (especially municipal, especially if not incumbent) know enough to make effective plans. It’s one thing to view from the outside, but without access to the staff who have all the history and supporting documentation, it’s just not realistic.
no tax. only spend.
How does that work again?
Ask Ottawa the last 4 years, or Ontario the last… oh I dunno… 20. At least since Dalton “no new taxes” McGuinty.
The province ought to kick in money if they are limiting development charges but yes, higher property taxes and service rates (water/garbage) are the only sustainable way forward. You can’t find “efficiencies” forever.
The province is kicking in money, though. Assuming you’re talking about the agreement the province has with cities to reduce development charges by 50%.
My comment was pretty vague but yes, I was referring to the funding for this coming from external sources including the provinces program for lowering DC.
You may be choosing to simplify the description of the program for brevity, but this isn’t an agreement to reduce DC by 50%: https://www.ontario.ca/page/development-charge-reduction-program
It’s a funding program that needs to be applied to, and the pool of money is handed out based on the criteria on that page.
None of this prevents the province from ordering a municipality to lower their DCs based on their whims. That’s a fear in the municipal asset management world throughout the country: capacity upgrades have been delayed and delayed to keep spending down, and with the push for housing the provinces are targeting DCs and are like, “too bad lol”.
Eta: I would encourage people to read this: https://www.calgary.ca/emergencies/feeder-main-repair/bearspaw-feeder-main-independent-review.html
Well… I mean… we are kind of in the midst of a housing crisis, among others.
I don’t understand what this means?
It means, development charges aren’t getting houses built, and we’re in a housing crisis to go along with the cost of living crisis, health care crisis, etc etc that we’re in. Something’s gotta give, or we’ll see an increasing homelessness crisis. I’m all for a better alternative, but as a society we’re also allergic to increasing taxes.
Okay, I see.
I think we have a fundamentally different understanding of DCs and I’m not sure either is 100% correct because it’s not a simple problem.
The DC is a charge to the developer. They are profiting from the improvements to the land that the municipality does, so this is a cost recovery for the investment the municipality did. If, for example, your municipality was building a sewer to your area you as the homeowner would have to pay for the connection on your land. This, in turn, increases the value of your property.
It’s effectively an incentive to the developer to build in areas where it doesn’t cost them as much to build, maximizing profits. There is no mechanism to force a decrease in house prices or rent. If the municipality charged the purchaser directly, then it would lower costs to them, but the infrastructure needs to be built whether individual homes sell or not so that’s not a great method.
This is going to make the infrastructure gap worse. Municipalities won’t be able to attract developers if they are charging appropriate DCs, so they will be forced to lower the DC and either raise taxes and/or utility rates and fees to keep things running and build for expansion. Or they won’t build for expansion and just cross their fingers.
If you read the Bearspaw feeder report you can see that Calgary was putting off expansion because of all the capacity savings the trend towards water saving devices gained. Those days are over. Municipalities all over the country are hiting this hard capacity wall and they have to build. But because of the direction the province is taking with DCs and overriding rejected development applications (because of infrastructure limits) we are all going to suffer so that developers can make more money.
I don’t have the solution to the housing crisis but I don’t think it’s “entice developers by making it more profitable to develop in your areas while redlining your infrastructure”.
The solution is raise taxes, but people’s heads explode when that gets brought up. And no, not “tax the suburbs more”. Taxes don’t work like that. So the core doesn’t vote for increased taxes because they don’t want to subsidize the suburbs (they don’t), and the suburbs don’t vote for increased taxes because the taxes they already pay aren’t getting them the infrastructure they need.
Take some of the rural parts of Ottawa, for example. They pay the same residential taxes as you or I, and their infrastructure absolutely sucks. However, they pay lower fees for things like transit. The logic is, because they have little or no access to transit, they should pay little or no transit fees. No. Charge the transit fees, and get transit built. And then increase the damn taxes to pay for the rest of the infrastructure.
He already had his chance to fix it, but he crumbled to the whiners about low taxes.
Now would be a perfect time for Leiper to produce an adult tax policy. Unfortunately, he’s choosing to consult those same whiners after the election.
