Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Obviously you could charge developers a lump sump that will cover the ongoing costs, but if you're going to cover ongoing costs with ongoing revenue, then you need to change the tax model to eliminate the suburban subsidy.
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I watched the video posted above (by mykalberta) and the speaker from the city said something I found interesting around the 37 minute mark. Basically, you can back calculate from his remarks that ~20% of the total property taxes paid in the entire city come from the office buildings in the downtown commercial core. He also had a graph showing that basically the only other types of property that pays for itself tax wise is medium and high rises. Essentially high density downtown subsidizes the rest of the city, including the inner city.
I think the whole urban vs suburban thing is a red herring. Costs are mainly controlled by density, so a low density inner city neighbourhood is more costly and less sustainable than a higher density suburban neighbourhood. And much of the inner city/close in suburbs are currently R1 zoned 50 foot wide lots, which is probably the worst building form possible from a tax perspective. With the new density requirements, condos in saddleridge help pay for the rest of saddleridge.
Density in many newer communities is greater than that of many older communities. In the NW, for example, Royal Oak has a density of 3130 people/km2, while the inner city Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill had a density of only 2460 people/km2, and West Hillhurst has only 2420 people/km2. Even perennial whipping boy of Tuscany has a density of 2756 people/km2. They should probably be complaining about the sprawl of West Hillhurst, and how the people there aren't covering the operating costs of their (now extremely old and inefficient) infrastructure, like old pipes, small neighbourhood schools, etc.