City of Ottawa

[lrt's friend]

Housing prices have skyrocketed across the board particularly during COVID. They have also gone down since then. Changing mill rates for condos will further destabilize the housing market with unpredictable consequences. Is that even within municipal control? Be careful what we hope for.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

You're kind of both right. People totally don't understand city taxes thinking they are like income taxes. But relatively matters when we haven't updated assessements since 2016. A huge number of people will see increases with suburban assessments especially needing to catch up. If it's done fairly and accurately there should be some substantial tax drops for those in more central areas and condos.

Assessments moving up or down don't substantially move taxes unless they move substantially relative to neighbours. In theory, SFH becoming more valuable should see those have higher tax increases than condos. That's true.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Housing prices have skyrocketed across the board particularly during COVID. They have also gone down since then. Changing mill rates for condos will further destabilize the housing market with unpredictable consequences. Is that even within municipal control? Be careful what we hope for.

Making condos cheaper won't destabilize the market. This is just suburbanite FUD. And yes, it's within municipal control.

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Housing prices have skyrocketed across the board particularly during COVID. They have also gone down since then. Changing mill rates for condos will further destabilize the housing market with unpredictable consequences. Is that even within municipal control? Be careful what we hope for.

Urban high-rise condos have less frontage meaning less roads, water and electric lines, sewers, etc. for the city to maintain. The fact that the condo association has to internalize costs like utility distribution, its "roads" aka corridors and garbage collection isn't exactly fair.

Out of curiosity, I viewed a 2 bedroom unit at the Barclay. It was unrenovated and had old original cabinets and fixtures from the 1970s. It was valued over 600K, taxes were over 5K and condo fees at 10K a year. Tell me how a suburban SFH pays its fair share again?

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Assessments moving up or down don't substantially move taxes unless they move substantially relative to neighbours. In theory, SFH becoming more valuable should see those have higher tax increases than condos. That's true.



Making condos cheaper won't destabilize the market. This is just suburbanite FUD. And yes, it's within municipal control.

It feels like Ford would just step in and stop it anyway. Suburbanites being allergic to paying more for anything with cries of fairness.

The long delay by MPAC seems also to have created a big divergence in new vs existing housing stock so this will also likely be at least partially rectified they do assessments again.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

Urban high-rise condos have less frontage meaning less roads, water and electric lines, sewers, etc. for the city to maintain. The fact that the condo association has to internalize costs like utility distribution, its "roads" aka corridors and garbage collection isn't exactly fair.

Out of curiosity, I viewed a 2 bedroom unit at the Barclay. It was unrenovated and had old original cabinets and fixtures from the 1970s. It was valued over 600K, taxes were over 5K and condo fees at 10K a year. Tell me how a suburban SFH pays its fair share again?

It is a pretty small percentage of city services that are in any way related to frontage. Plausibility local roads and sewer services. Everything else (police, fire, transit, social services, libraries, recreation) have little relation to frontage.

It is also much more expensive to do construction in urban areas, so sewer replacements, etc. are multi-year projects.

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by acottawa

It is a pretty small percentage of city services that are in any way related to frontage. Plausibility local roads and sewer services. Everything else (police, fire, transit, social services, libraries, recreation) have little relation to frontage.

It is also much more expensive to do construction in urban areas, so sewer replacements, etc. are multi-year projects.

How do you think that's true? Frontage goes hand in hand with density. All the services you mentioned above would benefit from having more residents in their catchment area from a cost effectiveness perspective. Transit is the obvious example. Imagine the per capita cost to have a bus operator drive a bus 1km down a suburban street that serves maybe 100 residents vs. driving the same 1km in Centretown where you serve 1,000.

[lrt's friend]

I don't t know how condo fees enter this discussion. Home owners also pay for maintenance. Also, transit service is much more dense in urban areas. We also must consider that the vast majority, particularly families want to live in a low rise situation, and where schools are more accessible and more modern. Condos are more attractive to singles, seniors and couples with no children. We should honour choices without imposing social preferences on the population. Property taxes are not perfect and those living in high demand neighbourhoods have had the biggest increases in taxes. Often those are the same neighborhoods with the most intensification where developers push up land values.

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I don't t know how condo fees enter this discussion. Home owners also pay for maintenance. Also, transit service is much more dense in urban areas. We also must consider that the vast majority, particularly families want to live in a low rise situation, and where schools are more accessible and more modern. Condos are more attractive to singles, seniors and couples with no children. We should honour choices without imposing social preferences on the population. Property taxes are not perfect and those living in high demand neighbourhoods have had the biggest increases in taxes. Often those are the same neighborhoods with the most intensification where developers push up land values.

It has nothing to do with schools. There are schooling options in urban neighbourhoods that are just as good, if not better, than suburban ones. This isn't the USA. If families are seeking "modern" (read: "newer") schools, which are primarily built in conjunction with new subdivisions, then that's a tradeoff they've decided upon vs. other luxuries such as good, frequent transit service.

As always, it's a question of space. People generally want more space and I don't blame them considering that's the "Canadian (American) Dream" enshrined in our culture. But the tradeoff for having more space for yourself is having less space for your neighbours, when considering a finite amount of area. And so when everyone wants more space, sprawl occurs and city services become costlier and costlier to provide. That's fine, as long as those residents who chose more space are made to pay their fair share for the resources they consume. Face it, it costs a fortune to provide transit service to places you always mention like Findlay Creek. And yet somehow, residents of those neighbourhoods have somehow gotten the idea they're the "little guy" who's being neglected, who can't afford to make sacrifices, who's having their pocket book rinsed in favour of downtown "elites".

It's completely ass backwards. Suburbanites' lifestyles are not as humble as they allow themselves to believe. The solution is simple, if you want it, be prepared to pay what it costs to provide it. It seems through all your arguments to neglect to touch on the root of the issue - that being a simple lack of funds.

[Truenorth00]

Gotta love the appeal by Boomer homeowners occupying homes that families with kids need. Every older SFH neighbourhood has a school with declining enrollment because families can't afford to live there. So all the families are living in sprawl at the edge of the burbs, where the schools (often bursting at the seams) were paid for with the six figure development charges imposed on those new homes.

In Toronto, they are literally trying to cram schools into the bottom floors of condos while closing them in suburban 416 because families with kids can't afford million dollar SFH. Not quite there yet in Ottawa. But certainty heading that way.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

How do you think that's true? Frontage goes hand in hand with density. All the services you mentioned above would benefit from having more residents in their catchment area from a cost effectiveness perspective. Transit is the obvious example. Imagine the per capita cost to have a bus operator drive a bus 1km down a suburban street that serves maybe 100 residents vs. driving the same 1km in Centretown where you serve 1,000.

Frontage does not go hand in hand with density. A condo in Orleans is still in a low density area where it is inefficient to deliver transit. A weird corner lot in an urban neighborhood still has a high frontage despite thr higher density or the neighborhood.

I am not opposed to a tax system that better accounted for externalities. But I don’t think the Westboro multimillionaires would benefit as much as they think they would.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Often those are the same neighborhoods with the most intensification where developers push up land values.

Developers don't push up land values. Basic geometry and economics does.

Even if city centres were never redeveloped, if every building and every property were sold from a mom or a pop to another mom or pop, unchanged in any way, in a city with a growing population, those land values are going to go up.

[rocketphish]

Don't blame Mayor Sutcliffe for Ottawa's public transit woes
The feds, Ontario and the city all made over-exuberant 'investments' in LRT and subways. Now it's a level of service we can't afford.

Randall Denley
Published Aug 20, 2024 • 3 minute read

There has been an interesting backlash against Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s request that the federal government pay taxes at the same rate as other property owners. It’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion, but it has caused some to question whether the city’s impending transit-related deficit is a sign of spending too much on other priorities or failing to raise taxes high enough.

Among the critics are Ottawa’s senior federal cabinet minister, Jenna Sudds, as well as various community activists and critics.

It was particularly amusing to see Sudds suggest that the 2.5 per cent property tax increases Ottawa had for the last two years should have been higher because of inflation. As a former councillor, Sudds surely knows that the city’s costs don’t mirror inflation. In keeping tax increases low for two years, Sutcliffe was fulfilling an election promise, a concept largely unfamiliar to Liberals.

Critics argue that Sutcliffe and his council have created Ottawa’s financial problems and now it’s up to them to clean them up. Some have questioned the planned Lansdowne 2.0 redevelopment, a new police helicopter and what is often, wrongly, referred to as a new police station in the ByWard Market.

These arguments are unsupported by the facts.

The apparently controversial police helicopter, announced in late July, belongs to the OPP and the province will pay all capital and operating costs. It will offer some benefit to Ottawa police, but it doesn’t cost the city anything.

Similarly, the so-called police station is actually a storefront operation in the Rideau Centre, a response to a high level of crime in the ByWard Market. As part of the new deal Ottawa got from the province earlier this year, Ontario is expected to pay $463,000 in startup costs as well as the annual lease costs of $245,000 for the first three years of operation.

Some have even complained about a new interchange on Highway 416 that will serve Barrhaven. Again, the province is paying, not the city.

It doesn’t make sense to compare Lansdowne 2.0 to the city’s transit problem. The renewal of Lansdowne is an overdue capital project that will benefit the city for decades to come. Yes, there’s debt but it’s appropriate to pay for the project over time. The transit problem is an operational issue, one that will create a hole of $120 million or more in the city budget every year until it’s fixed.

There is no pot of cash that could be used for transit operations rather than for rebuilding Lansdowne. Even if there was, it would be gone in just a few years if the city can’t bring transit revenues and costs into line.

Ottawa is not the only city facing transit operating cost issues. A recent study by Leading Mobility Canada looked at transit operating costs in eight major cities, including Ottawa.

It’s a grim picture, and Ottawa’s projected transit shortfall of $120 million next year isn’t the worst of it. Last year, Toronto had a $366-million gap. Montreal is looking at a shortfall of $565 million next year and that number is expected to grow to $700 million by 2028. Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver are also facing big transit operation increases.

The common factor is a big transit expansion pushed by federal and provincial capital contributions. Unfortunately, in most cases those governments don’t help cities run the expanded systems and with mediocre transit demand, more and more burden gets shifted onto property taxes. In Ottawa, fares are supposed to pay 55 per cent of costs. That number is now down to 30 per cent.

That’s the problem Sutcliffe is trying to do something about. All three levels of government made over-exuberant “investments” in LRT and subways at a time when it was seen as an excellent way to spend money. Now it’s a level of service Ottawa can’t afford.

No amount of patronizing advice from the federal government or off-base criticism from people who think they know what they are talking about will change that.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/denley-dont-blame-mayor-sutcliffe-for-ottawas-public-transit-woes

[DTcrawler]

Oh, right, keeping property tax increases unreasonably low is ok as long as it’s an election promise

I guess that does emphasize how the average short-sighted and self-centred suburban voter brought this mess upon our city. So yeah, not necessarily Sutcliffe’s fault.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

Oh, right, keeping property tax increases unreasonably low is ok as long as it’s an election promise

I guess that does emphasize how the average short-sighted and self-centred suburban voter brought this mess upon our city. So yeah, not necessarily Sutcliffe’s fault.

Well we voted for lower taxes so we should get what we asked for.

I don`t see how it is self centered to want roads that we all use and to pay lower taxes but it`s selfless to want the city to pay for more frequent busses 25% of us use and opposing transit fares increase to pay for any of it.

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Well we voted for lower taxes so we should get what we asked for.

I don`t see how it is self centered to want roads that we all use and to pay lower taxes but it`s selfless to want the city to pay for more frequent busses 25% of us use and opposing transit fares increase to pay for any of it.

sigh

How is "I don't use transit so I shouldn't pay for it" still a phrase that any semi-informed person still believes? Fine, let's abandon transit altogether and reinvest all that money into more roads, which we all use, and we'll have a blissful, free-flowing city like Houston, right?

When I say "self-centred" this is the exact type of thinking I'm referring to, wherein voters think of what would suit them best but fail to recognize what happens when you multiply that same thinking on a scale of 1M+ people. Yes, politicians needs to abide by the wishes of the people who elected them but they also need to do what's best for the city. Nobody in Toronto, Vancouver, etc. explicitly voted to pay the highest taxes possible out of pure masochist joy, but they're seeing increases of 6-10% because that's simply what's necessary.

And it's a bit of an oversimplification to say "we all use roads". Some bloke driving from the depths of Kinburn across the city every day consumes way more "roads" budget than a downtown resident who lives a 15-minute lifestyle, who probably logs the same mileage over the course of a week or even longer. Look at that map posted of planned suburban and exurban roads projects for the next 8 years. The length of road network in km's covered in that map is probably similar to the entire street network of downtown Ottawa, which gets way more usage and has a way bigger property tax base to cover it.

There's no point repeating the same stuff ad nauseam but the most frustrating part of this is that Sutcliffe voters and CFRA callers and even people in this forum who whine nonstop about OC Transpo's shortcomings lack the ability to look in the mirror and realize that maybe the current situation is partly self-inflicted.

Do you seriously think that many of the people flooding the comments on OCT's facebook posts with complaints about poor service, or the people flooding the comments on the City's posts with complaints about too much traffic, aren't a lot of the same people who voted for Sutcliffe thinking that 2.5% would be a great deal and that everything would be fine and dandy?

[phil235]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Well we voted for lower taxes so we should get what we asked for.

I don`t see how it is self centered to want roads that we all use and to pay lower taxes but it`s selfless to want the city to pay for more frequent busses 25% of us use and opposing transit fares increase to pay for any of it.

Maybe it's a failure to get the message across to people, but to say only 25% of the city uses transit is quite misleading. 100% of the city benefits from transit, whether they use it or not, and I'd go so far as to say that the city will not function without a working transit system.

A very large percentage of families in this city have at least one member who relies on transit and would have to stretch financially to get an extra car. Even if they could, our roads couldn't sustain that many ore cars. Students need transit to get to school. A big chunk of the lower wage earners we rely on to run most of our service industry who can't afford a car. The economy of the city depends on mobility and mobility depends on transit.

It may not be more selfish to want roads, but it demonstrates a pretty serious lack of perspective beyond one's own personal needs.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I don`t see how it is self centered to want roads that we all use

I use a very limited number of roads. We can defund the rest of them.

[YOWetal]

I don't disagree with any of the arguments that we need transit nor that we should let it whither. I just don't think the argument that many non-property tax paying (though if we get a 10% increase we may see rents increase above guideline as I understand is being persued in Toronto) are selfless for wanting more transit funding and not wanting to pay more transit fares but those paying taxes much of which goes to others are automatically selfish. Even if many are openly selfish and look on the less fortunate with disdain. The bottom line is that is not a winning political argument. Focussing on the utility of transit to get others off the road is a better argument even if factually it's an exxageration.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

I use a very limited number of roads. We can defund the rest of them.

I suspect you don’t use a very limited number of roads. How do you think the crap you buy and food you eat gets into the city?

[J.OT13]

Everyone pays taxes, even renters. The property owners download their taxes to their tenants as part of their rent. Transit fares should be cheaper to make transit more competitive. It may never beat driving in terms of speed, especially off peak, but it could certainly be cheaper.

Those who remember the transit strike in the winter of 2008-2009 could probably validate that traffic was far worse than it was when transit was/is running.