THUNDER BAY – The City of Thunder Bay has given a sneak peek of its smart growth action plan.
City manager and growth task force chair John Collin unveiled the plan during a non-business meeting Monday evening.
Collin said the plan is still in development, but at this time, it outlines key community initiatives which will help grow the city’s tax base, workforce, and attract new people and businesses.
He said over the last six months, his team has been conducting research through academic studies, community focus groups, and stakeholder meetings to inform the overall plan based on “best practices and experiences.”
According to Collin, the city needs a comprehensive plan to move Thunder Bay forward. Simply put, the city has not seen significant growth in the last decade.
Collin pointed out Thunder Bay’s population growth was 1.3 per cent between the last two census studies, conducted in 2016 and 2021.
Ontario’s average between the same two time periods was 5.8 per cent, and Canada’s was 5.2 per cent.
“The formula for success at the municipal level is not terribly complicated. Get a few more people, and that will cause a few more businesses to come in, which then will require more people, which then will require more businesses, and it grows on itself,” Collin said.
Collin noted that businesses looking for new markets are not going to risk setting up shop where there is little to no population growth.
On the other side of the coin, he said, the municipality cannot increase its revenue without attracting more people and businesses.
The property tax base in Thunder Bay over the last 10 years is 7.8 per cent, whereas compared to inflation over the same 10-year period is 31.8 per cent.
“We are not keeping up. Therefore, every year, the administration is forced to recommend and then council is forced to approve shaving the ice cube a little bit, cutting back a little bit on services, or raising property tax rates more than people would want, or raising user rates more than people would want,” Collin said.
The municipality gains 84 per cent of revenue from residential properties, said Collin. A total of 16 per cent comes from commercial and industrial properties combined.
“We basically would have to be building approximately 558 homes, residential units, every year. To put that in perspective, that's more than double what our 10-year average is right now. It's a very ambitious target and probably not an achievable target because too much of our tax base is reliant on residential properties,” Collin said.
He said the plan targets a more achievable three per cent tax assessment growth per year. Inflation in Canada is approximately between 1.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent on an annual basis. Having a three per cent target allows the municipality to have a little bit more revenue over inflation.
“We achieve this by using land and resources wisely, strengthening our local economy and tax base, focusing on complete and connected communities while protecting our national assets and affording opportunities for everyone to thrive, because that increases population,” Collin said.
Focusing on increasing large commercial and industrial projects, as well as multi-residential units slightly, he said, would help reduce the city's reliance on residential tax revenue.
“You do not get from something less than one per cent to three per cent overnight. This is a 10-year plan that we are working on, and we wish to achieve that three per cent growth in the latter years of the plan because it will take that long to get there,” Collin said.
For example, one of the action items in the plan is revitalizing the north and south downtown core, where the city’s tax revenue is highest per acre of land.
Although Collin said they still need to make “a concrete action plan for the revitalization” of the cores, his statement is an example of the fluidity of the plan in itself. The plan is not a “be-all end-all document, but it will be the roadmap for everything that we need to do as we move forward.”
Densifying the cores with multi-residential units is key, he said. A single-family home in the outskirts of the city yields far less revenue per acre than in the urban core.
Collin said the tax revenue per acre for the suburban area is approximately $10,000 based on 48 units. In the urban core, it's approximately $37,000. If the city focuses on multi-unit residential, the average tax revenue per acre on 48 units is over $100,000.
For Collin, the message is: “densify, intensify. It makes your overall situation and your growth objectives much easier to achieve,” Collin said.
At-Large Coun. Mark Bentz shared his concern over plans to densify the city with multi-residential units.
“I just don't want to see us focus on multi-residential because that's the biggest bang for the buck. I think there are some people that are interested in different types of living arrangements,” Bentz said.
Collin said, “there is still a lot more work to be done” with striking a balance with the plan for what types of development are sustainable.
“We recognize that there is a demand for single-family homes. I, personally, wish to live in a single-family home. Others have the same opinion or desire. We have to cater to that, to be sure, but we have to do that in a sustainable way, whereby we're sure we have the resources and the funding necessary in order to pay for that luxury,” Collin said.
“I think broadly speaking, what you will see within the action plan overall is that our focus, our priority, and where we are going to incentivize will be intensification. But we're not going to put up any barriers or roadblocks to those who wish to establish developments that are more dispersed. I don't see us incentivizing that. I see that being market-driven.”
