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Originally Posted by bomberjet
I'm not understanding how infill development is 'bad'. Or being misrepresented. That seems to be what Brian M is getting at.
Building new houses on old streets is a problem? Or they don't use existing infrastructure?? Well duh, old sewers need to be renewed. Not because of infill, but because they are old. I don't get it. How can these hacks at the City continue to be elected. Probably because nobody better wants anything to do with City Hall for all these reasons.
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I think the issue of water/sewer replacement is with timing. Yeah, the old stuff needs to be replaced eventually, but the old sewer servicing an old 800 sq.ft. home with 3 people living in it in St. Boniface will eventually need to be replaced, but it can likely be deferred for a couple of years or even a few decades, depending on how desperate the city is. But the moment a developer comes in and wants to put a 20 unit condo on that same piece of land, the city either has to swallow a multi-million dollar sewer replacement bill immediately, or tell the developer to do it themselves, in which case, they will probably give up since the numbers won't be favorable then.
I don't think the general public understands just how difficult it was for the city to balance it's budget this year, and it's getting even more difficult as each year passes and cost pressures escalate. When this is the environment you are operating in, suddenly a $10 million sewer upgrade for a neighborhood to accommodate some infill isn't an attractive strategy when pools are closing, ice rinks are in disrepair, and local streets are riddled with potholes.
It's not that the city doesn't want infill, it's that the city has no money in the near term to accommodate the service demand it will generate. The result is that politicians would rather build "free" suburbs and deal with budget issues later (aka kick the can down the road to the next politician 10 years from now), as opposed to making hard decisions now and growing a sustainable city.