öÏÓãÊÓƵapp

“I can’t embrace the outlook of the next three years of these budgets. I believe it needs a different lens on them purely around affordability. The outlook, in my view, it’s too high, and I believe the community would agree with that sentiment too,â€� öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s mayor said during an end-of-year interview with the Mercury Tribune.

However, some changes could be coming to that increase in the coming months. When announcing the province was reversing course on the earlier this month, Paul Calandra, minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, said there will be a review of development charge policies that, according to öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s city staff in an April 2023 report, will result in a $227-million shortfall over the next decade.

Those changes include exempting many types of housing projects from development charges, which are collected by municipalities to pay for infrastructure needed to service those new developments and the resulting population growth. Guthrie said he expects at least some of those changes to be reversed.

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Of the 8.52-per-cent property tax bump for 2024, about a third can be attributed to the city’s costs for items that typically fall under the province’s jurisdiction, as well as the results of provincial legislation, including Bill 23, the 2022 legislation resulting in that expected development charge shortfall.

Reiterating a pledge he first made to the Mercury Tribune in November, Guthrie said should new provincial legislation show how at least some of that shortfall will be made up, he will move to have the budget reopened so that those costs can be taken off the tax-base, thus resulting in a lower property tax increase.

“Even though it’s been a year of us collectively advocating for all cities, all organizations collectively advocating that we knew that these (changes were going to cause problems), the fact that they’re recognizing it now is a really good signal, but we need to see the follow-through with whatever the legislation is in the new year,� he said.

Guthrie added that since the new property tax rate doesn’t come into effect until April, it is possible those reductions, if they come to fruition, could be made before the first property tax bills are mailed out in the spring.

‘We have more resources going into these issues, and yet the problems are getting worse’

For öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s mayor, a main focus in 2024, he said, will be continuing to deal with the crises that has impacted some of the city’s most vulnerable residents: homelessness, mental health and addictions.

The first stop will be in late January, when the County of Wellington is set to host a two-day symposium on that trio of issues, along with everything connecting them locally. Guthrie said something he hopes to see come from those discussions is a new way of dealing with the crisis locally, especially if calls to the province for assistance continue to go unanswered.

“I hope in the absence of an overhaul at the provincial level for uniformity across … the social service type of systems, in the absence of that I think it’s going to have to be left to cities to just try to get holistic plans together ourselves,� he said.

“That’s my hope, that the symposium brings that out of there because we can’t keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. We have more resources going into these issues, and yet the problems are getting worse. That tells me that we do need a complete overhaul.�

Guthrie said he believes the city also needs a detox centre, as well as more investments in earlier interventions to the afflictions that, if left untreated, can turn into problems like addiction later on in life.

“A lot of people that are struggling nowadays is because of early childhood trauma issues that happened years and years ago, so the interventions earlier in people’s lives, investments in those is probably missing,� he said, adding this also needs provincial funds to properly address.

“It’s maybe not missing (as a whole), but it’s missing to the degree that it should be.�

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The new year, Guthrie said, will also see him revisit a motion he initially looked to bring to council in late November, but later pulled: barring encampments downtown.

That motion, which was originally set to come to council’s Nov. 28 meeting, also called for an investigation into a possible sanctioned encampment site and further efforts for housing supports for those living in encampments.

“I am still going to be bringing something forward in the new year for the community to discuss — I really say the community to discuss because we do need to have a community discussion about this, and I’m not going to shy away from it,� he said.

Part of the upcoming discussion, he added, would include looking at a safe spaces bylaw, also first proposed in November.

“I feel like we need to have some sort of order for our public spaces so that everyone can feel safe within the public realm. The key word is the word ‘public’ — some of the behavioural issues cannot be ignored, like open air drug use, defecating and using the bathroom in public areas, some pretty lewd acts that have happened in our downtown, not disposing of needles properly,� he said.

While there are encampments around the city, Guthrie said he is focusing on the downtown core because that is “where they happen to have the most amount of friction.�

“That’s just an honest assessment of the situation. There are other encampments in the city that are not in the downtown core that may be having some of these same issues … but a mother and her child aren’t walking in those areas, whereas in our public realm in the downtown core, it is.�

Guthrie said he sees such guidelines being enforced by the city’s own bylaw enforcement officers, noting they would be a step in between the Welcoming Street workers, which help support downtown businesses and vulnerable people downtown with issues that may arise, and the öÏÓãÊÓƵapp Police Service.

“Bylaw’s job is not to hide in the bushes and jump out and ticket people. Bylaw’s job is to do things to get people into compliance and mostly through education,� he said.

“If I’m playing drums too loud at my house at 2 a.m. or something like that and get a noise complaint, bylaw comes to the door and it’s to try to get me into compliance, it’s not to immediately give a ticket.�

Mayor: öÏÓãÊÓƵapp needs more affordable housing

As has been the case for the past several years, Guthrie sees housing continuing to be a major issue for öÏÓãÊÓƵappites in 2024.

While reiterating past calls for assistance from upper levels of government, he also called for more movement on something he said is sorely missing in the city: new affordable housing.

“The thing I’m hopeful for 2024 is more of a community ask, for the private sector and non-profit sector to continue to try to see if we can really try to build truly affordable and/or supportive housing projects,� he said.

“We’ve done really well on the supportive housing side, lots of projects that are opening (in 2023) or about to open (in 2024) — those are in the pipe, but true affordable has been missing and we would love to see more of that.�

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One project that could be making its way to city hall in the new year is a proposal that could see nearly 1,000 new affordable homes in the south end of the city.

In a special meeting of council Dec. 5 when determining whether to keep provincially-ordered, but later rescinded, changes to öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s long-term development plans, council voted in favour of maintaining changes made to , a property next to Bishop Macdonell Catholic High School where non-profit developer Home Opportunities is looking to build 961 new homes. According to a letter from the non-profit, its pricing model would see the average carrying cost of a new unit lower than the City of öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s affordable housing benchmark.

At that meeting, council also endorsed a motion that, among other things, encourages Home Opportunities to submit a development application with city hall by the end of February 2024.

“That sounds like a really exciting opportunity for Clair Road. It will be a mix (of housing types), but the mechanism that the developer has in trying to help people get into home ownership seems really doable to me,� Guthrie said.

“These things are always left with the developer, they got to go through the process, but you can tell by council’s vote a few weeks ago that there’s a desire on council and the community (to do this).�

While this development, if it goes through as currently envisioned, is a step in the right direction, Guthrie said there needs to be more efforts citywide to get affordable housing built.

“Whenever there’s developments that get approved, the first question I usually get is, ‘Are they affordable?’ This one is one where we could actually be like, ‘Yes, this will be truly affordable.’ If everything flows on that one, it will be a good one, but we need more of that,� he said of the Home Opportunities’ project.

“If we can try to get them included in every development everywhere, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Developers could siphon off a portion of some of their units and developments and subdivisions to try to help, alongside what we’re doing for the housing process, by having true affordable units for rental and home ownership.�