Thanks To Decades Of Subsidizing New Development Through Property Taxes, Niagara Taxpayers Could Pay – Big Time!

A Commentary by Doug Draper

It’s beginning to look like decades of forcing Niagara, Ontario residents to subsidize sprawling, low-density development through their property taxes rather than making those profiting from this kind of costly development is finally catching up to our regional government. And we, the taxpayers in this region may be the ones who pay – big time!

Unfortunately, the region’s kiss-off subsidies to developers (and I’m talking not about staff, but about those regional councillors who are in bed with developers)could eventually leave Niagara with a capital deficit of $416 million in capital deficits over the next decade – a deficit we would be passing on to our children for generations to come.

This unprecedented $416-million shortfall, quoted in a report released this January 12 to the regional government’s Corporate Services Committee, could have an impact on the region’s “financial well being.”

The impact on taxpayers for years to come, according to the report the region’s chief administrative officer, Mike Trojan, and its corporate services commissioner, Brian Hutchings tabled before the committee, “would be significant.”

And this is where I come back in to stress the following. 

This region might not be facing such a dire financial forecast today if previous regional and local councils across Niagara, going back some 40 years, had the guts to make developers pay more or all of the full cost of the roads, water, sewers and other infrastructure needed to accommodate their mostly low-density subdivisions and other growth that hardly comes close to resembling anything close to “smart growth,” by today’s standards.

Indeed, our regional and local councils should not be approving this kind of sprawling, unsustainable growth in the first place, such as the big box stores on the most eastern end of Woodlawn Road in Welland, Ontario, the continued growth of 1970s suburban development in west Niagara Falls, the building of the Niagara Health System’s new regional hospital complex in the western fringes of St. Catharines, and on and on. This kind of un-smart, unsustainable development is costing ordinary taxpayers across this region big time and yet, our local and regional governments continue to have the rest of us subsidize it to the tune of one half or more or the costs of new roads, water lines sewers and other infrastructure needed to accommodate growth that is an assault on creating communities that are more friendly for walking, for public transit and other manners of getting around in something other than a truck or car – not to mention communities that are more sustainable from a tax point of view.

 Within the last couple of years, as I was heading to cover a regional council meeting, there was a line-up of trucks and cars one evening, all featuring the logos of developers across this region, protesting a modest increase in development charges. To the credit of the council, it ultimately approved an increase in development charges, but it is still lower than more than half the development fees charged in other regions across the province. That means that the rest of us – current property taxpayers already struggling to pay our taxes – are also paying more than half the cost for new development outside current urban areas where that development – if “smart growth” was taken seriously – should go. So here we are, facing hundreds of millions of dollars in shortfalls that will potentially be passed on to our children, and why? Because our regional and municipal politicians don’t have the guts to make developers pay for the full cost of the roads and other infrastructure needed to pay for their development?

Why should we who live in established neighbourhoods in Niagara be expected to pay a significant amount for this new development when our own roads, water lines and other infrastrusture is crumbling?. For some of the answer, stay tune to how many our your local and regional councillors received campaign funding for last fall’s muncipal elections from developers in this region. That may very well explain why so many of them are so reluctant to charge fair development charges.

You can bet that Niagara At Large will be looking forward to reporting these campaign funding disclosures. We are sure they will be interesting and at least some of them may explain why too many of our municipal councillors have not got the guts to charge developers the true costs of the infrastructure needed to accommodate their development.

Their gutlessness may lead to our children in this region being stuck with hundreds of millions of dollars in capital debt.

(Visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)