By Eric Stern
June 20th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
What happens when you ask Burlington City Council for a zero percent tax increase, does the sky fall?
I learned recently that City council has decided that existing taxpayers are going to pay for services required by people who will be moving into new homes and condominiums in the not too distant future. Council has pledged to build 29,000 homes by 2031 when the population will have grown the city from 200,000 to 265,000 people. That’s a lot of community centers, arenas, cricket fields, and bike lanes. Yes, bike lanes because the stated policy is no road widening to handle increases in traffic volumes.
You can listen to the comments made by Hassaan Basit, our new city manager, Click HERE as he describes the chicken and egg problem council has solved by building out services now, before the population increases. It runs to four minutes + but if you want to understand why taxes are going to increase – this is an important read.
My question is: “if we pay, in advance through our property taxes for these new services, will we get a rebate when the development charges roll into the city coffers? We’ll pay for the new services and then learn to love gridlock as Burlington becomes Toronto without the subways.
Should existing residents be forced to pay for services for new residents? The mantra in Ontario has always been “growth pays for growth”, meaning development charges and property taxes from new housing pays for services for new residents.
“Growth pays for growth” is a slogan often repeated by municipal members of council in Ontario and used to justify Development Charges. It is a guiding principle indicating an intent to make buyers of new homes pay for the cost of expanding municipal services to their location, rather than making existing homeowners (and voter base) pay for it through increased property taxes and user fees. It is related to the principle of “benefiter pays”, meaning infrastructure costs should be paid by those who will use and benefit from the installation of the services.”
Mayor Meed Ward was in the practice of saying growth does not pay for growth.
Before everyone comments on how Doug Ford cut the development charges, and there were cuts to those charges for affordable and attainable housing, city hall is building out services well before developers are building housing. Look at the Bateman community center, a $100 million-plus investment.
If the Alinea project at Appleby and Fairview adds 25,000 new residents as reported here does that make Sherwood Park or developer-provided land within walking distance, a more logical place for a community center?
Google Maps estimates the walk time from Appleby and Fairview to Bateman at 25 minutes. With over 25,000 people living near Appleby and Fairview the drive time may be even longer. Want to hit the gym on the way to work, good luck, you’ll be stuck in traffic. My point is, if the city had waited for the population to increase, there may have been a more logical location for a new community center.
School Boards won’t build a school until enough children are in the neighbourhood. Are we, existing residents, willing to accept housing first and services second or are we willing to accept that we’ll pay for the services, for new residents, now instead of waiting for new residents along with their development charges and tax dollars?
In the linked video above the Mayor asks staff:
Mayor Meed Ward asks: What a zero budget would do in terms of cutting service, or elsewhere, cutting capital, drawing down reserves and … Would people still want it knowing what that would mean.
“So we had a delegate and several pieces of correspondence suggesting that we get to zero increase and I’m wondering whether staff can tell us what that would do because there are certain things that we’re committed to for example union contracts, that’s about half our staff, things have to go up for that, there’s inflationary pressures and so forth, so there are some costs that we’re committed to or you know we’re legislated to do so right away we’d be looking at cutting somewhere. Would people still want it knowing what that would mean, I don’t know if it’s possible for you to simulate what a zero budget would do in terms of cutting service, or elsewhere, cutting capital, drawing down reserves, I’d be interested to at least be able to share that with the committee because they have asked us and so we can say this is what it would be are you still on it, they may be, some may well be, they have other suggestions for where they’d like to cut.”
City Manager Hassaan Basit “we are not a zero percent growth municipality that’s the simple answer.”
Basit started his response with “.. it can be done, however we’re then going to get back into the sky is falling narrative because then it actually will be falling”.
Basit made it clear: “we are not a zero percent growth municipality – that’s the simple answer.”
Burlington accepted the province’s housing pledge. The province’s Building Faster fund will provide Burlington with money if the housing targets are met. The fund is providing $400 million a year, for three years, to the 29 communities that accepted the pledge and achieved over 80% of their annual target.
As of February 2024 here is how Burlington was doing:
Our council jumps at every opportunity to build infrastructure and fights almost every development application. Between the current softness in the housing market and a potential glut of condos for sale in the GTA we may never meet the housing target, or leverage any of the provincial funds.
After Basit spoke, not a single councillor challenged the sky will fall narrative. Whose interests are our elected officials representing?
In the private sector ideas like a hiring freeze, or a no consultants policy, might be considered but in Burlington the sky will fall. We’ll have to wait to see what services will be cut, leaf collection, snow plowing, close the community centers … Thankfully water, sewer and garbage collection are still with Halton Region.
Here is an example. The live and play plan presented to our council on June 10th, 2024 is available here. The plan calls for a re-imaging of Central Park. The plan appears to be to tear down all the existing structures and build new ones.
I can’t find the costs associated with this plan. The community is asked for input without the costs being front and center. If Central Park is going to be reimagined through development charges then it might be something to think about, if Central Park is going to be reimagined through tax increases on existing residents then it might be something to not think about.
Pages 129 through 144 of the Live and Play Plan outline millions of dollars in external consulting costs, for many projects, but excludes construction estimates.
The engagement plans I have seen never start with – this project is expected to cost.
Another complaint, engagement plans rarely have a do-nothing option.
My last two questions:
What happens if all the new development takes much longer to materialize than our visionary council has imagined?
Who is leading the way we grow – city staff, council, or the electorate? Actually the province has determined the rate at which the population is going to grow. It is the city that determines how much money it has to raise through taxes to pay for that growth.
I was also upset when I read about the reimagining of Central Park. The tearing down of existing structures and building new ones is ridiculous. Especially the existing Seniors’ Centre – I ask what is wrong with it? The new build with allow us Seniors (oops I mean Older Adults) a new space to time share with other groups. Council thinks of so many outrageous and absolutely unnecessary ways to increase our taxes. Don’t let Central Park be one of them – leave it alone!!
We also do not need Burlington Property Taxpayers to be charged for future housing developments. This cost is for the developer and the new home owners. It must stop immediately. Liz Swart
I think we have to live with the fact they don’t understand the difference between dystopian austerity cost cutting and a robust cost saving and efficiency approach to stewardship of taxpayer dollars. How do I know that, neither the Mayor or CAO uttered the words. In business if you are asked to cut 10% of your budget, you find a way to do it and you dont have the luxury to study it or ignore the request for four years. Sooner or later the “budgets balance themselves”mentality that got Ottawa in a pickle barrel will hit Burlington.
They don’t even seem to understand the real every day numbers facing people’s lives – like property taxes..
You get rid of some false impression of actual – real – cost pressure by correcting for inflation in all the costs, and starting from there to get to adjusted or real costs. Compare all of these for the relatives. What are the real inflation adjusted increases for staff?
Looking at a longer term series can give even better perspectives of how much taxes are increasing more than inflation. Everything inflates and that needs to be accounted for, just like housing costs. How do these compare? This needs to be done.
Lots of available data indicate growth in housing has not reduced inequality, or increased affordability, markedly since 2000,to 2023. In fact severe unaffordability has really increased over that period. The idea that we are going to fix the problem is really a lie.
I got the following quotes from the Epoch newsletter of a few days ago – I could not get a link.
The data show that Canadian incomes have not kept up generally. So naturally, in our City Council, and the Province, insist they “need” more taxes (their income, taxed from our income) for themselves, and to help finance housing developers who are less input cost efficient than before, to try to meet the target affordability numbers that are presently the lie, which is beyond anything ever done in Canadian history.
This will be another drain on the incomes that are used to pay for housing, reducing affordability even further as incomes fall further. Is this dumb or what, not seeing this? More like not looking.
In Canada, the housing price-to-income ratio remained stable between 1980 and 2000, when it began a steady upward climb toward current levels. The housing price-to-income ratio varied little between 1980 and 2000, hovering between 3.2–3.5, according to Statistics Canada and Canadian Real Estate Association figures.
As of 2010, it had jumped to 5.9, and by 2020 it had hit 6.7. That means the average home price increased roughly 746 percent while the average household income rose only 295 percent.
Housing construction needs to increase by nearly 50 percent if Canada has any hope of keeping up with future demographic growth, according to authors.
If building alone was relied on to meet future demand, yearly housing completions would need to rise from the current three-year average of 218,000–320,000 between now and 2030, he noted in his report. He said higher deliveries would need to happen quickly to meet the expected peak population growth in 2023–24.
While the RBC report identified high interest rates as an ongoing affordability issue, it is not the only reason for fewer new builds. The report pointed to the construction industry’s “capacity issue,” noting that the level of housing construction required “is far above anything ever achieved in Canada.”
Rising property taxes, and provincial tax-like burdens subsidizing developers to supply affordable housing numbers they have never ever provided in history, and don’t have the capacity to supply today, are more numbers and finance facts.
City and other taxes affect affordability. City taxes are undoing the point of the housing program.
Perhaps they plan to “reimagine” Central Park the same way they did for Lions’ Club Park? That is, change a charming downtown green space into a parking venue, removing trees and sloped areas to complete it. That seems the same modus operandi used for the Robert Bateman conversion from usable neighbourhood track and green space to increased parking.
I now have the design for my 2026 Election t-shirt. It is in MMW blue with orange lettering and graphics. There is an orange hand with an erect middle finger placed dead centre on the face of the t-shirt. The caption above, again in orange, reads “Reimagine This!!”
This article in today’s Globe and Mail is very much to the point. I believe that finally people are starting to demand that governments, of all stripes and colours and a few hues, just stick to their core business and forget revising history in an attempt to social engineer. I don’t want my governments to “reimagine”; that prospect scares the hell out of me. I want them to provide, by whatever means is the most effective and efficient, the services that I need.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-toronto-pushes-stubbornly-ahead-with-a-mystifying-name-change-for/#comments
Central Park is just fine the way it is, leave it alone.
Follow the Engagement Charter fully and completely. Engage with all Residents of Burlington before any project decision is decided upon, and not after the fact. Have a “NO Option” in any and all Surveys run by the COB.
Stop spending millions of dollars yearly on outside Consultants. We know we as Tax Payers pay very high salaries to City employees who have or can investigate most if not all information needed without the use of outside Consultants.
Our City Council needs to become fiscally responsible with Burlington Tax payers money Starting NOW. Stop spending our money when not absolutely necessary to do so!
In the video Eric posted I loved the comment starting at 3:30 where the City Manager talks about the need to show value, transparency and engagement.
A City government that can’t accurately communicate how much municipal taxes are increasing is hardly in a position to extol the virtues of evidence based decision-making, transparency and engagement.
BTW…the starting point for redesigning Central Park (assuming, in fact, that it actually needs a re-design) should be to ask residents what, in fact, they want, not preface the discussion with a pre-conceived re-development plan absent cost estimates. The City exhibits the same lack of acuity and foresight as Alinea did this past Monday afternoon in their hapless presentation of their silly Appleby-Fairview development plans. If the City wants to have a discussion about “engagement” let’s start from the premise that the majority rules, and residents set the tone for what is required. Last time I checked this wasn’t North Korea.
Contact the mayor and your local councillor.
I was upset when I read about the reimagining of Central Park. The tearing down of existing structures and building new ones is ridiculous. Especially the existing Seniors’ Centre – I ask what is wrong with it? The new build with allow us Seniors (oops I mean Older Adults) a new space to time share with other groups. Council thinks of so many outrageous and absolutely unnecessary ways to increase our taxes. Don’t let Central Park be one of them – leave it alone!!
We .love Central Park the way it is, why re-imagine, this is getting to be absolutely ridiculous.
Thank you again Eric for the above information. If not for you writing this article, alot of us would be in the dark as this is a usual occurrence with our current Burlington City Council.
How can our Council charge Burlington Property Taxpayers for future housing developments? This cost is between the developer and the new home owners.
Is this Legal!
And Why did our City Council recently vote YES to reduce the developer’s development fees?
Unbelievable! We as Residents need to fight this with whatever it takes.