Threats to the City of Kingston

There are three broad categories of threats to the City of Kingston that risk negatively affecting the budget and our property taxes:

1. Health Threats

• The Spread of Lyme Disease

  Recent expansion of tick bourn Lyme disease has necessitated more scrupulous maintenance of public parks and trails to keep the ticks as far away from people as possible. However it is not enough. Public Health is also more concerned than ever because we have a very limited knowledge on the number, virulence and morbidity of the ever increasing number of strains of Lyme disease. Therefore we lack and are falling behind in the testing, diagnosis, and treatment options. This results in our local population being subjected to greater and greater unknown but real risk.

  I, with the help of professionals at Public Health and Queens, moved a motion to get funding to close this knowledge, diagnosis, and treatment gap.

  Please see my motion asking for a Lyme Research Network to be established Lyme Research Network Motion

  More will likely need to be done and I will continue to monitor and act on what needs to be done. Please also see KFL&A Public Health for more information

• The Cost of legalizing Cannabis

  While legalization of cannabis will lower the cost to the criminal justice system for higher level governments it will shift costs to local police forces, bylaw enforcement officers and public health agencies. All of these are funded by the City of Kingston. With the advent of legalization, new rules of evidence and new procedures will need to be implemented. It will be much harder to determine and administer because where previously possession of marijuana was enough, now, for driving while high, a degree of chemical compound must be scientifically and objectively found in the body. This means that local police, bylaw and Public Health will have more to do. The province might give us grants for initial training and equipment but subsequent training and equipment will be funded by local property tax.

  Among the new expenses legislated to our City resulting from the legalization of Cannabis are: 1) standardized field sobriety test equipment and training, 2) drug recognition expert training, and 3) prosecution capacity and forensic testing. The long term costs associated with these programs still remain unknown.

  I believe, in order to hold the line on the police, bylaw, public health budgets, we need more collaborations with community stakeholders to help reduce the need for calls for services and in general raise the level of community involvement in safety and crime prevention. I wrote an opinion piece on this issue in the Kingston Region. It can be found at their sister paper: Policing in 21st Century Kingston

  The legalization of Cannabis is still filled with many unknowns and potential pitfalls for the city. Please see Whig article for more information.

• The Opioid Epidemic

  Early signs of this epidemic were brought to my attention in 2015. I moved a motion to support our police, Public Health, and community by calling for the adopt the Patch4Patch protocols.

  Please see my motion on adopting the Patch4Patch Protocols

  This was a success, but the opioid crisis was much bigger than expected. I helped promote a broad based community drug strategy, involving frontline services and stakeholders at all levels. Please see KFL&A Community Action Plan for more information. As part of that strategy I moved to make Naloxone Kits available in public City owned facilities. Please, see KFL&A Public Health on Naloxone for more information.

  Please see my motion on making Naloxone available in the City Naloxone motion

  Despite some opposition from some councillors it eventually passed. Right now is the most dangerous time to take any recreational drugs. I will continue to push for what science and the empirical evidence says is the best way to fight this epidemic.

2. Social and Demographic Threats

• Population Decline

  Currently, the best data shows that the population of Kingston will continue to grow slowly and level off around 2028. Then it will start to decline around 2031. The latest census figures say that this data is optimistic. We have been growing at a much lower rate than the lowest estimates. Likely, our population will start decreasing sooner than expected.

  A lower population means lower demand for business services and less people paying the taxes for the city services such as roads. This is the first new economic force that will lead to a need to increase taxes and/or reduce services.

  This is a threat will affect us all negatively by 1) lowering potential business growth; 2) putting pressure to reduce City service provision; 3) increasing property taxes paid because tax base expansion has stalled or reversed; 4) in either case property values and peoples equity in their homes may go down; with city income going down 5) long term City asset management costs will go up as we find short term savings and 6) City debt repayment becomes harder.

  I wrote about these two threats of population decline and demographic shifts in the former Kingston Region newspaper. Please see: Are We in for a Rough Ride?.

• Demographic Shifts

  The whole western world is aging; that is, there are more retirees as a proportion of the population today than at any other time in history and the proportion is increasing. Kingston is on the leading edge of that demographic wave. This means that Kingston has proportionally more retirees than most other cities in Canada. Since it is true that everyone makes less money the day after they retire than the day before they retire the aggregate disposable income of the community will drop.

  Less money in the community as more and more retire hurts our community by 1) depressing business growth; 2) lowering demand for property which means lowering property values; this leads to 3) declining assessment values and 4) higher taxes to compensate. 5) Higher taxes will make us less competitive in attracting business which further depresses business growth. This is a bad positive feedback loop; vicious cycle.

  I wrote about these two threats of population decline and demographic shifts in the former Kingston Region newspaper. Please see: Are We in for a Rough Ride?.

• Shrinking of the Labour Force

  Three forces are at work against us: automation, retiring baby boomers, and the general decline in the number of population. The problem is that there will be fewer jobs in the future due to automation on the bottom end of the pay scale and fewer jobs all over the pay scale due to lack of qualified population to fill them. In other words labour economic forces are conspiring to give us higher unemployment with a corresponding labour shortage.

  Kingston has developed a workforce development and in-migration strategy, a youth employment strategy, and the grand goal of making Kingston a livable city in order to attract people here. It is not likely that these plans will be enough to overcome the threats to our economy. It looks like these solutions are contributing to cushioning the problem not overcoming it.

  Therefore we need to be ready to do more to find people and plan better for their future needs and expenses recognizing that without massive in-migration at the Federal level we can only lessen the problem.

• Racism and Intolerance

  Given that we have a labour shortage problem and a population shrinkage problem any hindrances to attracting people will hurt Kingston's future.

  More importantly, do we want to live in a city where racism and intolerance thrive? I would hope not. Yet recent events suggest that racism and prejudice are growing. This is not helpful on any level.

  I wrote an opinion piece on the subject in the Kingston Region newspaper. It can be found at: What Kind of City Do We Want?

  The editor was surprised at the level of anti- anti-racism comments and published this follow up editorial: Let's Make Racism Wrong Again.

  I believe it is important to promote diversity, inclusion, hope, dignity and human rights and that we should live in a world where people are judged by the content of their character rather than their colour, culture, gender, or orientation. Please see my motion to update anti-racism City policies: Reviewing City Policies to Update Anti-racism Policies motion.

3. Fiscal Threats

• Housing Downloading

  This is the biggest financial threat to the City of Kingston.

  In 2001, the City of Kingston in its role as Service Manager assumed program funding, administration, and oversight responsibilities for public housing and fifteen social housing providers from the Province. Under this arrangement, the City has legislated obligations per the Housing Services Act 2011, to provide affordable housing units and must maintain a minimum of 2,003 prescribed rent-geared-to-income units. These obligations continue; however, at the same time the federal funding provided to partially fund this housing is steadily declining. This decline is referred to as Step-Down Funding and occurs as operating agreements between the City and housing providers expire when mortgages on social housing projects mature. It is forecasted that all federal funding will end in 2035.

  There will be a substantial financial impact on the City in its role as Service Manager as the impact of the federal funding step-down coupled with the escalating costs in social housing and the indefinite requirement to continue to provide subsidy to meet service level standards. The federal funding paid to the City of approximately $3.7M annually will gradually decline to $0 by 2035 and the annual municipal subsidy cost to sustain social housing projects/operations is projected to increase from just over $10M in 2015 to $20M (net) by 2035.

  As capital requirements increase and capital reserve contributions remain static, the capital backlog for social housing providers is also projected to grow. It is estimated that by 2035 there will be an unfunded capital shortfall of approximately $150 000 000.

  In other words the province has forced the municipality to take increasing financial liabilities that will reach $150 Million by 2035 and the Federal funding that helped offset those costs is being reduced to zero.

• Suburban Sprawl

  There are huge, far reaching, and long term costs associated with suburban sprawl: increases in 1) Smog, 2) climate change, 3) chronic disease, 4) emergency room visits, 5) reduced productivity, and 6) increases in government liabilities.

  The principle reason for sprawl is prices subsidies: the way the rules and regulations are enacted and enforced creates a price structure that encourages suburban sprawl. Sprawl is defined with five traits: 1) low density, 2) separation of and reduction to single use or purpose (that is strict zoning), 3) leapfrog development, 4) automobile dependence and 5) fringe development (often on farm land).

  Everyone pays for this subsidy. Businesses pay the costs of sprawl through 1) traffic congestion delay which raises deliver costs, 2) and with reduced productivity resulting from excess mental and physical stress from longer commute times.

  Homeowners pay the price for sprawl through 1) increase costs due to automobile dependency, 2) increased chances of injury, 3) rising obesity due to less active life style, 4) smog in the on route neighbourhoods, 5) high density neighbourhoods subsidize low density neighbourhoods, and 6) extra fuel cost of long commutes.

  Governments pay 1) many of the costs of development, 2) the legacy liabilities, 3) excess health care due to the risks of driving longer and 4) new spending due to climate change.

  Traditionally suburban sprawl has been encouraged by 1) municipal government's zoning bylaws that try to encourage new development in rural areas, 2) by starting development with low density 3) by strict separation of zoning categories and finally 4) by forgoing pedestrian infrastructure.

  Past City Councils have wisely instituted an urban boundary to discourage development outside of where city services are currently located. This creates a marginal intensification incentive to build inside the urban boundary.

  This urban boundary came under threat in my council. During the Official Plan update tremendous pressure was put on staff and councillors to allow a small expansion. An expansion that could be a precedent for more and larger expansions later. Fortunately the Minister nixed that notion and we did not expand the urban boundary. However the threat remains because there are a lot of vested interest that would profit from increasing city costs and liabilities in green field development. I will be on the look out and work to protect the urban boundary and by extension city finances.

  Additionally past councils have started allowing for mixed use buildings with commercial and residential on top.

  My council further improved and refined proper intensification be commissioning a nodes and corridors study to better integrate future infill intensification development along transit supported arterial routes.

  My council also wisely saw the importance of active transportation infrastructure to reduce the need for sprawl.

  More needed to be done. In my term I introduced Life Cycle Fiscal Cost Benefit Analysis. Please see my motion : Studying and Reducing the Long Term Life Cycle Fiscal Costs of Development. Edmonton in 2011 discovered that "across just 17 of the more than 40 planned developments, costs to the City are expected to exceed revenues by nearly $4 billion over the next 60 years." At the time we had no idea of what Kingston's long term costs would be or what we could do to minimize them. My motion was designed to achieve that information and act on it.

  A second strategy that would help identify the true costs of development is "carbon costing." I moved a motion to do just that. Please see my motion Accounting for Green House Gas (GHG) Emissions or a "Cost of Carbon" as Part of City Project and Program Planning.

  Now, we need to actually take the information and adapt our policies. I will continue to make sure they are applied.

• Narrow Thinking on Budget Demands

  Clearly the budget demands from all the above threats are great. We face the need to spend more everywhere to maintain our standard of living. This reality has always led to two possible strategies: raise taxes or cut services.

  But there is a third way: we can take an entrepreneurial look and find new sources of non-tax revenue. There is no reason to limit ourselves to raising taxes or cutting services as strategies to deal with increasing budget demands. We can add value and trade value for value.

  I first suggested this in 2014 in a letter to the editor: Possible Opportunity

  Then as an opinion piece in the Whig: More Non-Tax Revenue Key for City

  In 2015 I was successful in getting "Pursue new and innovative non-tax revenue opportunities" added as a guiding principle of the City of Kingston's strategic plan. Since then the City of Kingston has found $18 million in new non-tax revenue. This means that we were able to keep $18 million more of our assets and services and/or we saved ourselves from having to raise taxes by 8.5% over the last three years.

• Unrepresented Taxation from the County for Paramedics

  Paramedics in Kingston have a very complicated funding model that essentially give the City of Kingston no oversight and no say in operations. The County of Frontenac sets their own response times and are failing to meet the response times they set. The unit utilization hours are way above where they would need another ambulance and Paramedics are at their breaking point.

• Inflation

  Inflation cuts purchasing power. This means that everything the City buys costs more than before (things such as gas for vehicles and paper for work) resulting in upward demands for budgets and taxes.

  At the same time everyone in the City feels the same pressure on their pocketbooks meaning the economy becomes unpredictable as costs rise and spending in real terms drops. Inflation makes life harder for everyone but especially those on a fixed income.