City of Ottawa

[rocketphish]

Developer cash scandal inflames council divisions — and there may be no going back
Let’s talk about the optics of that $300K developer donation

Elyse Skura · CBC News
Posted: Feb 03, 2024 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

What do you get when you combine a local developer, an Ottawa city councillor and $300,000 in cold, hard cash?

A political maelstrom with the power to break the calm that this council has sought to foster.

In the same meeting where Mayor Mark Sutcliffe lauded the "professional and respectful tone" of this term — a stark contrast to his predecessor's fractious legacy — councillors threw down on an issue so explosive it seems incredulous that a veteran politician like Coun. Shawn Menard would not have seen it coming.

The relationship between developers and councillors is a perennial source of consternation, whether through a charity golf tournament or the sticky issue of campaign donations.

Yes, these "voluntary contributions" are their own thing. But they deserve the same degree of scrutiny.

<more>

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/de...and-there-may-be-no-going-back-1.7103419

[Truenorth00]

Menard should start reading into the record all the councillors' and mayor's donations from developers.

[Truenorth00]

It gets even better ....

So Minto can donate $1.45M and get their name on a pool and rec centre in Riverside South. But if some developer wants to do this in an urban riding it's "corruption" and needs to be redistributed citywide. This is how these suburban councillors will hollow out Ottawa.

My understanding is that a developer has pulled their voluntary Community Benefit Agreement now that the terms of the MOU have been significantly changed by city council to be city-wide rather than local and because of the politics on this.

https://twitter.com/ShawnMenard1/status/1752038983368839589?t=T5iI8-xeCyh8aQybOIwmug&s=19

These are the counselors that voted to steal the money for their own wards, resulting in the deal falling through.

1st vote is to steal the traffic calming money. 2nd is to steal the affordable housing money. 3rd is a vote to accept the money.

2nd vote also includes stealing any future money until a new policy is written on these deals. I assume that distinction is why a few votes switched sides on that one.

https://twitter.com/SjamieIt/status/1752167309727125981?t=lQ69r9m-dDp3y8DIA636YA&s=19

[phil235]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Also, regarding amenities, there is a limit as I pointed out. If you put apartment buildings up on every block, do those public amenities get maxed out?

I believe any fundamental changes in tax policy will lead to overall higher housing costs for everybody. It will also drive more people out to satellite communities.

I find this discussion a little odd. Before amalgamation, Nepean and Gloucester were fiscally well run.

There may be a limit to the density that can reasonably be served with amenities, but Ottawa is nowhere near that limit yet, and may never be there. That debate is for another era.

A change in tax policy would incentivize more efficient development across the board. In theory at least, that should mean lower taxes for everyone.

The point that Nepean etc were better run from a financial perspective has been debunked to a certain extent. They were relatively homogenous municipalities with new infrastructure- their big bills were in the future. Also, all of the most expensive services were regional. I’m not that up on the whole history of those places, but it’s no coincidence that pretty much every similar suburb (North York, the West Island etc) makes similar claims about how great their finances were before amalgamation.

[Fraser]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

There's no need to build more enormous bureaucracies. Just cut their services instead of always making urban areas eat it. It should be really simple. Every time the suburban dominated council wants to cut, they should be forced to aim the cuts at the least efficient and most expensive places to deliver services.

What services should the suburban residents be gutted of exactly?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Fraser

What services should the suburban residents be gutted of exactly?

He wants to gut transit service, so that the city is even more car dependent overall.

If you want transit service, you have to move to the Confed Line and live next to the Queensway traffic sewer. It should be apparent, that transit is down the list a bit when choosing housing.

Besides housing prices and taxes, most people choose to live in the suburbs to be away from the crime and drugs that many urban neighbourhoods suffer from. The more safe urban neighbourhoods have long priced out the poor and even the middle class.

This is why lower income housing is most often placed in more suburban areas. It is cheaper to build there and wisely, we have in more recent years chosen to intermix housing for different income levels rather than building ghettos as we did in the 1950s and 1960s. Examples being parts of Overbrook, Ledbury, Heatherington among others.

The proof is in the pudding when we chose not to build a LRT station for Jasmine Crescent.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It gets even better ....

So Minto can donate $1.45M and get their name on a pool and rec centre in Riverside South. But if some developer wants to do this in an urban riding it's "corruption" and needs to be redistributed citywide. This is how these suburban councillors will hollow out Ottawa.



https://twitter.com/ShawnMenard1/status/1752038983368839589?t=T5iI8-xeCyh8aQybOIwmug&s=19



https://twitter.com/SjamieIt/status/1752167309727125981?t=lQ69r9m-dDp3y8DIA636YA&s=19

I don't know what to say. This is no different than when a film production company donated $1M towards a playground at Mooney's Bay around 10 years ago. I don't think this an urban/suburban thing. This seems to be about various people being so legalistic and needing protocols for everything and also it puts pressure on certain city councillors to do more for their communities. It makes them look bad when they do not have the same negotiating skills.

I was speaking with a former councillor yesterday that certain councillors do more for their wards than others. It was pointed out, that certain past councillors did next to nothing. To some degree this is how we got Jim Watson groupees. They hid under his coat tails while not doing much work in their wards. This should not be taken as a generalization but an example was given of someone who should have never been elected. They were in over their heads.

[passwordisnt123]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Look at a city budget. Guaranteed more city $ are spent on that Centretown block than the suburb. There are probably dozens of kids getting daycare subsidy in the block as little as none in the suburb. The police get probably 10X as many calls to that block as does the fire dept. In my high rise we get 5 or 6 calls a year. The fire dept came to my suburb once in 18 years growing up for a small kitchen fire. Social services which is a larger budget item than roads same story.

Regardless it doesn't matter we don't have a poll tax we are a democracy and everyone has an equal voice.

There are two falsifiable claims in there. Let's walk through both of them.

Claim #1: "Guaranteed more city $ are spent on that Centretown block than the suburb."

Fact: This has been studied again and again so there's no need to rely on intuition or gut feelings. I know of three separate studies commissioned by the City of Ottawa in the last 15 years. Two of them by Henson, one I believe by Deloitte. They all show that suburbs cost way more in municipal services than they generate in taxes. You can read more about these studies here:

https://pub-ottawa.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?documentid=86660

https://app06.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/ara/2009/02-02/Document%205.pdf

The studies consistently show that there is a net variance of more than $400 per household. Suburbs are WAY more expensive.

Claim #2: "we are a democracy and everyone has an equal voice."

It would be very nice if this were true but sadly it is very false. The wards of West Carleton-March, Rideau-Jock and Osgoode each have less than 30,000 population. They are the most rural and least urban wards and each get to elect one councillor who has full voting rights.

In order to grant the fine people in those three wards that amazing level of democratic access, 11 wards in Ottawa are packed with more than 45,000 population. Each of the people in these 11 wards are worth only about 2/3 of a human being in those three rural wards.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wards_of_the_City_of_Ottawa

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Fraser

What services should the suburban residents be gutted of exactly?

Since those suburban councillors keep voting to underfund transit, I say they lead by example with their disproportionately overserviced wards.

After that, any cut they propose, they get to lead. Want to cut library hours? Let them go first.

And so on.

Heck, let's cut some road maintenance too. There's no reason for Bronson to have more potholes than Fallowfield, other than the city misallocating road maintenance.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

He wants to gut transit service, so that the city is even more car dependent overall.

Wrong. The burbs are already car dependent and keep electing councillors who want to cut and underfund transit. I don't see why those cuts should be applied evenly and not biased towards the least transit dependent communities.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Wrong. The burbs are already car dependent and keep electing councillors who want to cut and underfund transit. I don't see why those cuts should be applied evenly and not biased towards the least transit dependent communities.

Dangerous precedent but you could lower their tax rate making it very popular. Cut them down to rush hour only.

Simple fact is most voters don't use transit and only agree to fund it if they think it will get some people out of their cars and hence out of their way. Anything denying this is just a fudge.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Dangerous precedent but you could lower their tax rate making it very popular. Cut them down to rush hour only.

Simple fact is most voters don't use transit and only agree to fund it if they think it will get some people out of their cars and hence out of their way. Anything denying this is just a fudge.

The only dangerous precedent here is that increasingly anti-urban policy here is sleepwalking this city into the kind of hollowing out we see in the US. All while, urbanites disproportionately pay the bills.

And indeed, if the median voter thinks transit's only utility is traffic reduction (a view suburbanites regularly express with their votes) than maybe service in low use areas should match what they vote for.

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

There are two falsifiable claims in there. Let's walk through both of them.

Claim #1: "Guaranteed more city $ are spent on that Centretown block than the suburb."

Fact: This has been studied again and again so there's no need to rely on intuition or gut feelings. I know of three separate studies commissioned by the City of Ottawa in the last 15 years. Two of them by Henson, one I believe by Deloitte. They all show that suburbs cost way more in municipal services than they generate in taxes. You can read more about these studies here:

https://pub-ottawa.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?documentid=86660

https://app06.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/ara/2009/02-02/Document%205.pdf

The studies consistently show that there is a net variance of more than $400 per household. Suburbs are WAY more expensive.

< snip >

Thanks for posting those two reports.

From the 2009 Hemson report:


Notice, for the city of Ottawa, at the time of the report, that ‘Inside Greenbelt’ properties were generating a positive amount for the city; that the ‘Rural’ properties were generating a negative return; but that the ‘Urban – Outside Greenbelt’ properties were almost neutral. It was not, at that time, Barrhaven, Kanata, and Orleans that the inner suburbs are subsidizing.

Indeed, the later, 2021, Hemson report also mentions that, at a high level, the budget for the city of Ottawa has grown as expected between 2013 (when a detailed study was done) and 2020. This would indicate, Hemson says, that approximately the same amounts are being spent to do the same things throughout that period. However, during those years, over 80% of the population growth happened in the ‘Outer Suburbs’. If these areas truly were the serious drain on the city’s finances, as has been postulated in this thread, then the city’s budget would have grown disproportionately. Yet, it did not. By 2021 the city was spending about the same (adjusting the value as required, of course) per capita as in 2013.

Statistics can be used to support any opinion. Espesially when they are 'Cherry-Picked'.

Look at the number of rural and suburban Councilors, compared to the number of city Councilors representing wards that are entirely within the Greenbelt. One could say that, since each Councilor and their office has a cost, more money is spent on Councilors outside the Greenbelt. It is a true statement, but completely useless.

Non-residential taxes account for about 35% of the tax revenue, yet gets about 30% of the expenditures. Obviously, non-residential is subsidizing residential. This is blatantly unfair. Only non-residential uses will henceforth be permitted on roadways. This sounds about as ridiculous as what some have been suggesting.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The only dangerous precedent here is that increasingly anti-urban policy here is sleepwalking this city into the kind of hollowing out we see in the US. All while, urbanites disproportionately pay the bills.

And indeed, if the median voter thinks transit's only utility is traffic reduction (a view suburbanites regularly express with their votes) than maybe service in low use areas should match what they vote for.

Well amalgamation avoids a hollowing out as it forces the suburbs to pay for the downloaded services. The risk of something too aggressive is we are in a big hole and will have substantial tax increase over the next few years and people can still flee to Rockland, Arnprior or Gatineau.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The only dangerous precedent here is that increasingly anti-urban policy here is sleepwalking this city into the kind of hollowing out we see in the US. All while, urbanites disproportionately pay the bills.

And indeed, if the median voter thinks transit's only utility is traffic reduction (a view suburbanites regularly express with their votes) than maybe service in low use areas should match what they vote for.

This is quite the statement. The hollowing out of American cities had everything to do with racial tensions that peaked during the 1960s. This has never been a significant problem in Canada.

The only issue right now in Ottawa relates entirely to federal work from home policies, but this will never be comparable to what happened south of the border. We continue to see development in urban Ottawa, which I see as a positive.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Thanks for posting those two reports.

From the 2009 Hemson report:


Notice, for the city of Ottawa, at the time of the report, that ‘Inside Greenbelt’ properties were generating a positive amount for the city; that the ‘Rural’ properties were generating a negative return; but that the ‘Urban – Outside Greenbelt’ properties were almost neutral. It was not, at that time, Barrhaven, Kanata, and Orleans that the inner suburbs are subsidizing.

Indeed, the later, 2021, Hemson report also mentions that, at a high level, the budget for the city of Ottawa has grown as expected between 2013 (when a detailed study was done) and 2020. This would indicate, Hemson says, that approximately the same amounts are being spent to do the same things throughout that period. However, during those years, over 80% of the population growth happened in the ‘Outer Suburbs’. If these areas truly were the serious drain on the city’s finances, as has been postulated in this thread, then the city’s budget would have grown disproportionately. Yet, it did not. By 2021 the city was spending about the same (adjusting the value as required, of course) per capita as in 2013.

Statistics can be used to support any opinion. Espesially when they are 'Cherry-Picked'.

Look at the number of rural and suburban Councilors, compared to the number of city Councilors representing wards that are entirely within the Greenbelt. One could say that, since each Councilor and their office has a cost, more money is spent on Councilors outside the Greenbelt. It is a true statement, but completely useless.

Non-residential taxes account for about 35% of the tax revenue, yet gets about 30% of the expenditures. Obviously, non-residential is subsidizing residential. This is blatantly unfair. Only non-residential uses will henceforth be permitted on roadways. This sounds about as ridiculous as what some have been suggesting.

The fact that rural costs are higher should be no surprise. But what are we going to do? Those living in rural areas had no choice. Amalgamation was imposed on them. There were probably other subsidies available from other sources for rural communities to offset the higher cost of services. For example, they were probably the most effected by the downloading of the provincial highway system back in the late 1990s.

Other comments about rural representation don't pay attention to the fact that this was a compromise based on the loss of local representation and to give a reasonable rural voice on city council knowing that rural needs are substantially different. Again, based on provincially imposed amalgamation.

[Richard Eade]

I think that there is a lot of mis-information around; including about who subsidizes whom for what – and why.

An example is the big water pipe that Ottawa ran out to Cumberland. Why? The same river runs past the far east end as past the city’s water filtration plant in the west end.

Economies of scale is a real thing, but there are limits. To take sewage from the far west end to the existing processing plant in the east end requires a lot of kilometres of piping that needs to be maintained – and re-sized if too much ‘Sprawl’ happens. The distance means that there must be intermediate pumping stations along the way, since gravity can not be used over such long distances.

There comes a point when it is more economical to simply build additional facilities, closer to where the water is needed, and where the waste is generated.

If Ottawa, Kanata/Stittsville, Barrhaven/Riverside South, and Orleans/east each had their own facilities, then the issue of ‘sprawl’ disappears.

In the ‘olden’ days, new subdivisions, built out in the ‘boonies’, had to have their own communal well; and each property was large enough to have its own septic system. And, Yes, this includes neighbourhoods that are now well within the Greenbelt. The developers were responsible for providing the initial infrastructure, and the house-purchaser paid the developer back. Those neighbourhoods were self-sufficient, in many ways. (Although the city was responsible for maintaining the old wooden Water Towers, there would be a special local tax levy when repairs were needed.) With distributed infrastructure, adding a new group of houses outside the ‘urban’ area wasn’t a big problem.

Then came the idea that a centralized system would be best for everyone. That is when things became expensive to expand the city.

Solution: Distribute the plants, again.

This is not limited to just sewer and water. There is a strong move to create small electric generators that can reduce the demand for moving huge amounts of power long distances across The Grid. The idea of ’15-minute neighbourhoods’ follows the same general idea. Don’t have huge, centralized facilities that requires transportation to/from them; distribute the services so that they are closer to where they are needed.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Well amalgamation avoids a hollowing out as it forces the suburbs to pay for the downloaded services. The risk of something too aggressive is we are in a big hole and will have substantial tax increase over the next few years and people can still flee to Rockland, Arnprior or Gatineau.

The thing is, when they flee to those areas they pay up. Go look at taxes and services in those parts. You're only getting a break on property taxes out there if you have well and septic. And in Gatineau, you're putting up with worse infrastructure, worse healthcare and higher provincial taxes.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Fraser

Suburbs are expensive, but this is a little disingenuous.

The suburban picture is from a neighborhood built 30-40 years ago and was in a completely different City (Nepean). The City of Ottawa has made progress in densifying the suburbs.

I don't see what's disingenuous. The point is not about what the land use policy was when and where the places where built. It's what the impact of those decisions are now.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Look at a city budget. Guaranteed more city $ are spent on that Centretown block than the suburb.

I'd like to see the math.

Regardless it doesn't matter we don't have a poll tax we are a democracy and everyone has an equal voice.

In Ottawa, some have more equal voices than other, actually.