Paying the Piper

Last night I spent more than seven hours in the public gallery at city hall watching a new council scramble for position. It was brutal.

Although the Mayor denied it, from the outset it was clear that a voting block has been formed. In response to Joni Baechler's (Ward 5) enquiry "Who are the Fontana 8?" reported in the London Free Press, Fontana said that he expected to lead a Team of 15. He stated categorically that he had not met with groups of any size but had met with every individual one at a time. More about this later.

Stephen Orser (Ward 4), who had been referenced in the Free Press article, interjected that after talking to most of the councillors, he had concluded that “there are eight on Fontana’s side”.

Fontana then indicated that he had distributed a list of suggestions to aid the council in its deliberations. When Nancy Branscombe (Ward 6) characterized the list of suggestions as “presumptuous at best and manipulative at worst”, Fontana retorted that by choosing to eliminate the Board of Control the previous council had opted for a “strong mayor” system and he was simply exercising his prerogative.

The list was not distributed at the meeting but its contents became clear as the meeting progressed.

Built and Natural Environment Committee (BNEC)

The “Fontana 8” revealed itself early on in the selection of the Built and Natural Environment Committee and its chair. Baechler, always quick off the mark, proposed Polhill, Swan, Matt Brown, and White with herself as chair. Instead, following some fancy footwork by Matt Brown, the committee lost Matt Brown and gained Armstrong, then, at the behest of the Mayor, Armstrong was replaced over his objections by Denise Brown and Bud Polhill became the chair.

The significance of this cannot be overstated. Joni Baechler is widely recognized as an expert on municipal planning. She has both a broad and detailed knowledge of the Planning Act, the Official Plan, the Provincial Policy Statement, the Zoning By-law and other related legislation that is unparalleled on council. She pointed out that a number of major area and secondary plans (the Southwest Area Plan, the Downtown Master Plan, Meadowlily, etc.) would be coming forward this year and she has both the background experience to deal with them and the impartiality needed to smoothly conduct the public participation meetings that will be held.

Bud Polhill objected to what he perceived as the implication that he would not be impartial. Having worked with both of them on Planning Committee, I would say that he is bang on: he would not be impartial. Polhill’s chief qualification for Planning is that he never saw an application or a development proposal that he didn’t like. And no wonder. Although he has not yet released a list of his campaign donations for the 2010 election, a review of his past contributors shows that the vast majority are from those in the development industry.

Most applications that come before the committee are not controversial; 97% are supported with few objections or questions. But a small number are very controversial, especially where important environmental, aesthetic, or community concerns are at stake. This is where it becomes important to appreciate the importance of the professional staff’s recommendations and to remember whom you have been elected to represent.

The outcome of the vote revealed the identity of the Fontana 8: Bud Polhill, Steve Orser, Matt Brown, Dale Henderson, Paul VanMeerbergen, Denise Brown, Sandy White, and, of course, Joe Fontana himself.

Matt Brown

Of these, Matt Brown has proved to be the greatest disappointment. Touted as a fresh, new moderate, it is clear that he has political masters to appease. The circuitous way in which he removed himself from BNEC replacing himself first with Armstrong and then, with the help of Fontana, Armstrong with Denise Brown, and supporting Polhill over Baechler suggests that he too has to pay the piper.

More about the standing committees tomorrow.

Who wouldn’t want a zero per cent tax increase?

I was asked by local media yesterday about how I felt about Joe Fontana’s pledge to have no tax increases for the next four years. Well, what’s not to love? Who wouldn’t like to be able to campaign on that?

But is it doable? Is it realistic to suggest that we can keep everything we have, continue to pay off our debts, meet our contractual obligations, pay for our regulated programs, expand services to new homeowners and industries, without any extra costs even though we still have inflation?

The last person to make those kinds of promises was Ottawa mayor, Larry O’Brien, in his 2006 election bid. He won the election but four years later taxes have increased by 14%. This year the tax increase was 3.77% and transit fares went up by 7.5%.  O'Brien is not the front runner in the current campaign for mayor.

Windsor recently announced a zero per cent tax increase. To get there, they had to eliminate their municipal daycare programs, getting rid of the equivalent of 74 full-time staff as well as making cuts to parks and engineering departments, among others.

Fontana says he can do it without any cuts. He’ll just increase the tax base through growth.

What kind of growth will it take to make up the difference?

Currently, 1 per cent of our budget is equivalent to $4.2M. That means in order to cover the 2.7% increase adopted recently by council as a preliminary target, Fontana would have to find another $12.4 M in revenues. Add to that the additional $8M required for our water and wastewater sustainability plan, and you’ve got over $20M to find in assessment growth. In terms of growth, this would mean adding at least 8,000 new single family homes to the tax base every year. But our population growth is only about 3,000 per year. Who will buy these homes?

What will attract newcomers to London are jobs. So what about attracting businesses and industry to London in order bring more people here?

Attracting industry and luring businesses away from their existing locations can be an expensive undertaking. Currently, taxpayers pick up the tab for servicing new industries to the tune of nearly $7M per year. Where will the money come from to double or triple that? What kind of incentives will we have to give to businesses to locate here? How will the costs be covered?

To have the kind of business and industrial growth envisioned by Fontana would mean something on the order of ten new One London Places added every year for the next four years or two and a half Masonville Malls.

And don’t forget the time lag. It takes about two years to get the buildings up and the taxes flowing.

Fontana suggests that all this can be accomplished by simply relaxing the rules a little bit, not standing in the way of anyone with a piece of land he or she may want to “develop”. No wonder he has the support of the Building and Construction Trades.

It will be interesting to see who the rest of his backers and allies are. It would appear there is plenty of opportunity for assessment growth for political campaigns.