The City of Thunder Bay is engaged in budget season and striving
to keep its total tax levy increase to
2.6 percent. As part of its new
two-part budgeting approach, the capital budget two-year plan is now underway with
initiatives including $34 million in road improvements in 2026 with another
$26 million in 2027 as well as initiatives in waste diversion and transit. The proposed
capital budget for 2026 amounts to $160 million while 2027 is going to be
lower at $148 million. January will see the
operating budget and with the 2025 total levy at $241.7 million, a 2.6
percent increase could bring the levy up to $248 million.
The proposed 2026 tax levy increase is indeed modest by recent
historical standards as the accompanying figure shows as the 2025
increase was 5.2 percent and 2025 was 4.5.
However, the proposed 2.6 increase is also below the average increase
over the 2015 to 2025 period which comes in at 3.4 percent. Of course, increases need to be balanced
against what the needs are and keeping rates low for their own sake is not
necessarily the ultimate policy objective.
Rather, the aim should be to provide the best public services desired at
the lowest costs possible which implies efficient and not wasteful spending, which brings me to the main event.
Whether the City of Thunder Bay will come in with a tax levy
increase of 2.6 percent or not remains to be seen. However, what is more important is what often
seems to be a lack of strategic direction with how Thunder Bay seems to
allocate its spending and projects by doing them in a manner that often works at cross purposes. A case in point is
the recent moves to build density housing in the City of Thunder Bay to address
the housing shortage and provide affordable housing.
The City of Thunder Bay is preparing to sell municipally owned
land to developers to build density housing.
The pieces of land are: 300 Tokio
Street, 144 Fanshaw Street, 791 Arundel Street, and the land between 211-223
Tupper Street and 224 Camelot Street. Despite
the oft stated claim to want to provide affordable housing, the City
has apparently rejected a developer’s affordable housing bid for the land that
included transitional housing because it was not dense enough. The City of
Thunder Bay wishes for: 400 units on Tokio Street, 144 on Fanshaw Street, 600
on Arundel Street, and 185 on Tupper/Camelot streets for a total of 1,385
units.
Now, Thunder Bay municipal politicians are very good at using the
right words and as one councillor was quoted:
<<"There is no question that we are in a
housing crisis, not only in the city of Thunder Bay, across the province and
across the nation," Foulds said. "We're also in a climate
crisis."
"In order to deal with those two huge issues, we do
need to have a focus on intensification and increasing the density of our
cities, building on existing infrastructure. With that said, we do need to make
sure that the infrastructure can handle it. We also must make sure that the
developments are appropriate and safe.">>
The problem here is that Thunder Bay’s idea of increasing
density in a climate crisis apparently includes cutting down swaths of green
space to build density development in areas often removed from where density either
already exists or should be promoted. Moreover,
the constant dispersion of new development results in the new residents of
these “density developments” having to rely mainly on automobile transport rather than public transit which is not convenient or timely given the dispersed nature of the city.
As noted in an earlier post:
<<Of these four proposed locations, three are
essentially going to be plonked on available space – often green space – in the
midst or immediately adjacent to existing residential areas. Only one – the Camelot Street location is
going to be placed near a downtown core area.
And that is the point. To date,
the large builds on Junot and Fulton have been built in or adjacent to existing
lower density residential areas and often at the expense of nearby green
space. Except for Camelot – which is a
good location if one is planning to build up core area density – these are all
scattered willy-nilly in places where the only option is to drive somewhere to
get anything done.>>
As noted in the same post, the logical place to target density developments in Thunder
Bay should be the two former downtown cores areas of Port Arthur and Fort
William and the corridor connecting them that runs along and immediately
adjacent to Water/Fort William Road/Simpson Streets and Algoma/Memorial/May
Streets.
So, how does this come back to my point about wasteful
spending? Thunder Bay is constantly trying to revitalize its core areas – the former
cores of Port Arthur and Fort William - with initiatives that cost millions of taxpayer
dollars. For example, the recently
completed north core/Port Arthur streetscape project clocked in at about $13
million. Currently underway is the south
core/Fort William Victoria Avenue revitalization project which is going to kick
in at $18.4 million. Then there is the Simpson
Street redevelopment cost from the end of Victoria Avenue to the Ogden/Dease
Street area which is approaching the $8-$9-million-dollar cost.
In total, this is almost $40 million dollars in capital
spending and rather than being additionally leveraged into a denser set of core urban areas
with the tens of millions of dollars in federal housing infrastructure money, it
is going to be left to mainly its own devices to attract residents. And beyond these four proposed projects,
there is the proposed
Central Avenue Development Lands project which while ostensibly in the “center”
of the city will build over 40 acres of largely wooded area eliminating much
of the green corridor that runs from Lakehead University through to the College
and ultimately Chapples Park.
Thunder Bay’s development motto is essentially “density if
necessary but not necessarily urban density.”
Thunder Bay equates urban density as simply the act of putting
multi-residential units on anywhere the city has surplus land rather than working
with owners in existing brownfield areas to consolidate derelict and underused properties.
Infill is not always the same as creating urban density. Thunder Bay wastes taxpayer money by
providing business owners in the former core areas with beautification baubles
but then does not follow up with real strategic investment in those areas. It is the type of short-term thinking that
has led to the creation of a dispersed and costly to service city with an
over-reliance on automobiles. Enjoy the short-term
construction benefits from all the new housing projects as the future costs to both the taxpayer in servicing
costs and the environment will be substantial.
