Weekly newsletter: September 5, 2023
Hello and welcome to another school year!
As a general note, please take care when driving and observe posted parking and stopping regulations as well as speed limits, especially in school zones. For parents dropping kids off near Mother Teresa High School, please note the new no-stopping regulation on the east side of Silver Sage Avenue.
Let’s talk money this week.
Budget directions
The Finance and Corporate Services Committee is currently meeting to discuss, among other things, the budget directions for 2024.
Budget directions set the guidelines for city staff to set next year’s capital and operating budgets within, including the rate of property tax increase.
Once committee passes the budget directions, Council must do the same next Wednesday to officially kick off the budget process. As I am not on the Finance and Corporate Services Committee, my chance to speak to and vote on the budget directions will come at Council next week.
Like last year, Committee and Council will be voting on capping the property tax increase to 2.5 per cent. Coupled with a 1.5 per cent in assessment growth, this translates to a 4 per cent increase in residential property tax revenue for the city.
Can the City do with more money to fund its services? Absolutely, but we must realise residents are not an endless source of revenue, and the money we take isn’t a blank cheque. Just as you and I are in our own lives, the City must be responsible with where and how your money is spent (obvious, but it’s a point worth reinforcing).
Over the next two months, opportunities for public engagement will become available with city staff and City Councillors. Like the 2023 budget process, the southern suburban Councillors will likely host consultation events together.
1245 Kilborn Place
Finance and Corporate Services Committee will also be discussing a proposal by city staff to purchase the former Diocesan Centre at 1245 Kilborn Place in Alta Vista Ward to use as future supportive housing.
I’m supportive of the intention behind the proposal. From health services to employment workshops, supportive housing comes with wrap-around services to ensure its residents can succeed.
For Alta Vista, it should mean an end to using two of its community centres as temporary shelters — community centres that should otherwise be used for community programming, ironically, programming that’s part of that wrap-around support.
It’s rare that land inside the Greenbelt so close to major amenities is offered to the city, where it simply could have been offered to a private developer at a much higher price.
While I’m not balking at the idea of supportive housing, I do question whether it should be funded from property taxes. I believe property taxes are meant to fund municipal services like road, transit, and sewers, but I also recognise the current fiscal framework was created 100 years ago.
Based on the current framework, this sort of initiative should be funded through income taxes, but it also reinforces the need for a change in that framework to match what we need in 2023.
Vacant Unit Tax
I have stated my opposition to the Vacant Unit Tax (VUT) in the past. I was also part of a group of Councillors who attempted to repeal the VUT at a Council meeting in August, but we were unsuccessful.
To preface, I don’t buy into the argument the declarations are unfairly burdensome or difficult to complete. My only property is my own house, and I filled out my declaration in 30 seconds or so. There were anecdotal arguments about seniors falling through the gaps of the process and unfairly punished, but seniors had the highest rates of completed declarations in the city.
The declaration process could not have been any simpler, and I do agree some of the inflated numbers from the first year of declarations could be anomalous as residents continue learning about and accepting the initiative.
The appeals process also protects homeowners from wrongful charges, such as if they are clearing out a deceased loved one’s home, on deployment, or renovating between tenants, etc.
Where I don’t agree with the VUT is its efficacy and how the information is collected.
The types of vacancy targeted by the VUT are low in Barrhaven East, and even if a vacant property was targeted by the VUT, I’m not sure putting a 700,000$+ home on the market qualifies as adding to the affordable housing stock — if the homeowner decided to rent it out, I’m not sure it’d be considered affordable, either.
I’m also generally against the reverse onus method of information collection. In principle, the City is presuming everybody is committing the offence of keeping a property vacant unless the homeowner opts out.
Interestingly, the VUT has generated some cool administrative data for the city, but the purpose of the VUT is to tax vacant properties. There may be no easier way of collecting that information right now, but until it becomes less intrusive, more refined, and better focused, I can’t support the presumption of guilt unless proven innocent (plus audit).
That also goes without mentioning the staff and administrative requirement of running the VUT program.
Affordable housing, including deeply affordable units, absolutely needs better funding to ensure every resident can choose both the roof over their heads and to feed themselves and their families.
However, full funding is supposed to come from upper levels of government. It’s rich to place responsibility on another level of government, but the fiscal framework (here he goes again with the fiscal framework) under which municipalities operate hasn’t been updated in about 100 years.
I would love for the City to fund and manage housing since we know our own communities best, but the fiscal framework must allow for that to happen (same for many other social services).
Hopefully, opportunities to discuss the VUT will come up again in future years of this term of Council. We can’t always tax our way out of issues. The conditions that created the need for the VUT need to be addressed.
The topics discussed this week may be a bit dry, but I hope you’ll understand why I feel they are important!
Until next week.
-Wilson