City of Ottawa

[phil235]

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.

I don't believe that any of this is factual. You are looking at a high-end rental aimed at young professionals. I don't see why you would conclude that they are heavier users of police, fire and social services than a suburban neighbourhood.

[Truenorth00]

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.

What's disingenuous about pointing out that these places don't pay for themselves? The problem here is that they don't pay enough and consume a disproportionate share of services. Either their taxes should be raised or their services should be cut.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

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

Prove it. With more than just your feelings. At least I have the Halifax study showing how density correlates to cost for various services.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Hmmm. So, we want everybody living in commie blocks.

You can have density without commie blocks. You realize that right?

But no this isn't about making anybody live in a certain way. I couldn't care less how you live. I just want to stop subsidizing the suburbs.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You can have density without commie blocks. You realize that right?

But no this isn't about making anybody live in a certain way. I couldn't care less how you live. I just want to stop subsidizing the suburbs.

We need to design better cities. That is not happening.

Amalgamation was supposedly going to improve efficiency. It didn't.

Amalgamation was going to solve Ottawa urban financial issues. It didn't.

Building all these enormous bureaucracies that amalgamation brought us, has given us an unresponsive civic administration.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We just need more a mix. Build mid and high rises along stroads (that should be improved with narrower lanes, wider sidewalks and bike lanes, you know, streets) and at every big box super centre. Make it easier for people to get to those retail centres with pedestrian and cycling paths going straight through.

We can make suburbs with sfh more sustainable and walkable.

I agree. We have haphazard planning especially when it comes to pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, and it also applies to transit. We plan neighbourhood road patterns for buses to run on certain streets, then we change our transit plans. The only thing that remains workable are for cars.

Do even the newest neighbourhoods include continuous safe cycling routes?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by phil235

First, that is quite a nice building with all sorts of amenities within walking distance. Not quite a "commie block".

Second, it is much cheaper to provide affordable housing in apartments, and much more practical to provide it in walkable areas where residents don't need to use a car to live their lives. There is really no such thing as affordable single family homes, at least in Canada.

Third, no one is saying that everyone has to live in apartments. What we are saying is that tax policy should no longer subsidize the people who want the big single family home, and we shouldn't be decimating well-used urban transit so we can continue to run inefficient and lightly used routes through low density suburbs. If suburbanites want that service, they shouldn't be asking others to pay for it.

Your replies on this topic often resort to hyperbole and dubious factual statements. This is really about rebalancing and recognizing that we have subsidized unsustainable development patterns for decades. Any objective analysis from a financial or environmental perspective supports that. The question isn't whether changes have to be made, it is how we should go about it.

I know, but a fundamental change in tax policy will cause real estate upheaval. If we implement a 25% tax increase for all suburban areas to give a similar tax break for the other half of the city. What happens?

How many people are forced out of their homes as a result of the tax increase? Where do they go? They have to downgrade homes, that don't exist.

This will drive up real estate prices in urban areas (where taxes are supposedly lower), because the housing does not exist. Simple supply and demand. So, the gains from lower property taxes only apply to existing residents who get a windfall when they sell their homes at higher prices. But all newcomers have to pay more. So any gains are lost. This is why I brought up commie blocks. In order to compensate for the increase in urban housing prices, the only possibility is to build cheaper buildings.

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.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

We need to design better cities. That is not happening.

Amalgamation was supposedly going to improve efficiency. It didn't.

Amalgamation was going to solve Ottawa urban financial issues. It didn't.

Building all these enormous bureaucracies that amalgamation brought us, has given us an unresponsive civic administration.

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.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We just need more a mix. Build mid and high rises along stroads (that should be improved with narrower lanes, wider sidewalks and bike lanes, you know, streets) and at every big box super centre. Make it easier for people to get to those retail centres with pedestrian and cycling paths going straight through.

We can make suburbs with sfh more sustainable and walkable.

Can we though?

Let's be honest. These places aren't changing in any substantial way. It's not like in 20 years, Barrhaven will have the walkability of Westboro.
This wouldn't be a huge problem if we weren't sharing a large municipal government with them. Unfortunately we are. So we can't stop the mooching. But we can stop it from getting worse. No more of this "Spread the pain" nonsense everytime council proposes service cuts. Aim them at all the places that are the least efficient to serve.

And where we offer services in the burbs? Only in the densest corridor. Save the bus on the stroad with apartments. Cut the meandering subdivision bus route. Etc.

[Truenorth00]

Anybody who doubts how inefficient the suburbs are should look at the GTA and the massive difference in taxes between the 416 and 905. And then compare the difference in services between the 416 and 905. Having Orleans in the same municipality as Vanier and Barrhaven in the same municipality as Centrepoint massively hurts the communities inside the Greenbelt. But it's a great deal for the burbs.

[Fraser]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

What's disingenuous about pointing out that these places don't pay for themselves? The problem here is that they don't pay enough and consume a disproportionate share of services. Either their taxes should be raised or their services should be cut.

Because it’s not how the Ottawa is building its suburbs anymore.

The comparison used a housing development constructed 30-40 years ago by an entirely different city.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Fraser

Because it’s not how the Ottawa is building its suburbs anymore.

The comparison used a housing development constructed 30-40 years ago by an entirely different city.

Throwing in a few townhouses in a new subdivision doesn't substantially change the cost of servicing these suburbs who have a massive amount of legacy cost built in.

[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/ottaw...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/sta...QybOIwmug&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/...8DIA636YA&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/sta...QybOIwmug&s=19



https://twitter.com/SjamieIt/status/...8DIA636YA&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.c...cumentid=86660

https://app06.ottawa.ca/calendar/ott...cument%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_...City_of_Ottawa