From the Toronto Star
Region needs cash from Queen’s Park, developers to pay for infrastructure
A proposed development freeze could spell the end of construction sites like this one in North Oakville.
Memo from Halton Region:
Show us the money.
Otherwise, we won’t connect our pipes to the toilet or kitchen sink in the brand new home you have planned for the suburbs.
Region chair Gary Carr would like to send that ultimatum to Queen’s Park and developers in a showdown over funding for hospitals and other infrastructure that could bring final approvals for 40,000 new homes in Milton and north Oakville to a grinding halt.
“Growth is not paying for itself, and we’re saying to the province: Until it does, we are not going to continue to grow. It’s as simple as I can put it,” Carr said, following a meeting of the region’s health and social services committee. He repeated that blunt message three times yesterday.
A motion to impose what amounts to a freeze on any new development not yet approved comes before the committee in November, and after that goes to a full council debate. It follows distribution of a confidential staff report.
Halton politicians say they have little choice but to play hardball with the one weapon they have – a loophole in the Official Plan that allows them to refuse sewer and water pipe connections to new developments until financing arrangements are acceptable.
The proposal signals the fast-growing region’s frustration over a rising infrastructure deficit, and the unanswered question of who will pay the bills.
The tipping point seems to be the increasing sums the region is being told to pay for badly needed new and renovated hospitals, which councillors say will place an unacceptable drain on municipal budgets. Those new homes would bring an extra 120,000 residents to an already overloaded hospital system over the next 13 years.
The current showdown dates back to the downloading of costs during the years of the Mike Harris Conservatives, the full impact of which is only being felt now.
Fees have traditionally been paid by developers to support the cost of new communities, for example for roads, water pipes and sewer lines – and hospitals.
The developers got a break from the Harris government on paying for hospitals, something Premier Dalton McGuinty has so far shown no signs of reversing.
With two new hospitals needed and two expansions planned for existing hospitals across the region – which includes Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Georgetown – the region’s share of the bill for capital and equipment costs could be as much as one-third.
That’s equivalent to $300 million or more – triple the region’s annual police budget, Carr said.
On hold are projects involving Oakville-Trafalgar Hospital and Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, which CEO David Scott said yesterday was at a crisis point.
Scott outlined plans that would scale the Brant project from a $300 million expansion to $180 million, including $60 million to be paid by local residents and the region.
“I don’t know how the community share (which includes the region) will be funded,” Carr said. “We are adding this whole new cost. I don’t know how the taxpayer can fund this.”
Stephen Dupuis, CEO of BILD, a group of Greater Toronto Area developers, called the situation in Halton “frustrating” but “also a bit of a leverage game.”
“What is a developer to do?” Dupuis said, adding that Halton’s development charges – between $41,000 and $44,000 per home – are among the highest in the GTA.
“The province has to assert itself, otherwise the growth plan is not worth the paper it is written on,” Dupuis said.
The province’s 2006 Places to Grow strategy would see Halton grow by 300,000 residents over the next 25 years.
Late last night, a spokesperson for infrastructure minister George Smitherman confirmed the minister would meet Carr to discuss the issue, but said Halton had received its fair share of infrastructure funding totalling almost $1 billion.
“The Regional Chair is grandstanding all because the start of a new (Oakville) hospital has been briefly delayed due to shortages of skilled labour,” the aide quoted Smitherman as saying without directly addressing Carr’s charge that municipalities were being short-changed by having to pick up the costs of hospital funding.
“As the province is building a lot of hospitals right now there is a risk that prices escalate due to a lack of companies bidding for the work.
“Ontario is spending more this year on infrastructure than at any time in history, including when Mr. Carr was part of the Harris government, and Halton is receiving a very big share.”
Carr said he will meet with Smitherman, at which time his message will be: “We are not prepared to proceed with new development in Halton Region unless you come forward with your share of the funding for things like hospitals.”
Similar issues have been playing out in Brampton (which has balked at putting its share of the cost of a recently opened hospital on the property tax bill) and in Vaughan, where York Region has simply decided to do exactly that to get a hospital the city badly needs.
“We need from the province a financial commitment for (infrastructure) for at least the next 10 years,” said Milton Councillor Colin Best.
Infrastructure battles have raged for several years across the GTA, expressed in Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion’s Cities Now! campaign and Toronto Mayor David Miller’s ongoing One Cent Now campaign to get one cent of the GST devoted to cities.
Halton’s proposal is different because it comes with the apparent willingness of politicians to consider using their regulatory clout to get what they want. It’s something that’s been talked about in other regions but never acted upon.
A clause in an Official Plan agreement between developers, the province and the region states the region will not proceed with new allocations of water and waste water systems until such time as there is a financial plan acceptable to council.
No agreement, no approvals for toilets and drinking water. No new homes.
Treasurer Jane MacCaskill told the Star yesterday that, with an almost $2.3 billion infrastructure burden already imposed on the region by the provincial growth plan, Halton cannot handle any more.
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