Richard Plain's Alberta Blog

Communication and Structural Flaws in the St. Albert Planning Process

2010-11-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

To: Mayor Nolan Crouse and Members of City Council November 8, 2010

From: Richard Plain

Subject: Communication and Structural Flaws in the City Planning Process

Introduction:

Given the results of the public input received in the last election, Mayor Crouse has taken the initiative and asked Council to address ways of improving the existing city public involvement and communication process by January 4.

The City Administration has identified certain blocks of Council time in November and December that could be used to deal with this matter. It has also indicated:

“…it is necessary to understand the objectives and policy issues that are driving the need for a broad review of many community communication and consultation processes…”

The purpose of my submission to Council is to indicate there is a structural flaw in the Council and Administrations organizational structure that is at the heart of much of the non-financial concerns that are being evidenced by the citizens of St. Albert.

It is suggested that if the new City council makes an in-principle decision dealing with rectifying the structural problem that many of the council communication and public participation issues will be focused and located in a venue the Council and administration has used in the past to deal with complex public representation and communication matters.

The Nature of the Structural Flaw in the City of St. Albert’s Organizational Structure

A quick review of the existing City website indicates the City of St. Albert has invited citizens to apply for positions on the following boards and committees:

(1) Assessment Review Board; (2) Community Services Advisory Board;

(3) Environmental Advisory Board; (4) Library board; (5) St. Albert Economic Development Advisory Committee; and (6) Sub-division and Development Appeal Board.

The closing date for the applications was Nov. 5.

The above committees are examples of the belief held by the past council and their predecessors that citizens at large and members of council should pool their talents and skills and work together in furthering the interests of St. Albert residents in a wide range of endeavours ranging from social services, the environment and economic development.

Some of the members of the present Council have served on such committees and know how important it is to have members of the community at large working together in a partnership arrangement with their elected representatives in order to deal with important social economic and environmental matters and challenges facing the City.

Members of Council who have been appointed to such committees and boards also know how much their detailed background knowledge helps other members of Council in assessing the merits of the recommendations and proposals that end-up being put on a Council agenda.

As matters currently stand unless something is changed city council will not have the same detailed input, understanding and oversight into planning and development matters that Council currently receives from members serving on other key council standing committees. Nor will members of the public have the opportunity to make the type of detailed representation on planning and development matters that they can in other committee venues.

The facts of the matter are that unless the present council makes a policy decision and directs the administration to re-establish a planning commission or a planning board or committee the existing status quo will prevail and public input into the planning and development process is St. Albert will be relegated to second class status compared to the public input that exists in areas such as the environment, economic development, social services and library.

The consequence of forcing all the public input process either through developers at their public meetings and the council political process has led to some of the most lengthy frustrating public hearings that anyone has witnessed in the history of the city for decades.

The high quality residential character of modern day St. Albert was planned and developed in a setting that stressed the importance of a community planning framework that included both a Municipal Planning Commission involving extensive public input as well as a City Administration and City Council approval process. This system lasted for over 30 years.

The partnership approach towards community planning involved both elected and non-elected representatives working with senior administrators in overseeing the subdivision process as well as making recommendations to Council on statutory matters pertaining to the Municipal Planning Commission and the Land-use by-law.

The dismantling of the MPC occurred in two stages – subdivision and development process was turned over to the City administration in 2004-07 and the MDP process was absorbed by Administration and City Council in 2007-10.

Citizens were left with 5 minute presentations to Council or input to meetings put on by developers.

Recommendation : Eliminate the Existing Structural Flaw in the St. Albert Council and Administration Organizational Structure

Establish a Planning Commission, Committee or Board made-up of Council members, Citizens at large and Senior Administration to oversee the subdivision approval process and advise Council on all statutory matters related to planning that affects the City of St. Albert.

This will provide a venue where Council, its administration and the general public can focus on planning issues and concerns and the city administration can keep in close contact with the elected and non-elected members of the community.

St. Albert Municipal Election: The Costs of Homeownership in St. Albert vs Edmonton

2010-10-15T13:58:00.001-07:00

Municipal politicians have to be sensitive to the impact property taxes have on their electorate particularly during a recession.

The property tax is a wealth tax.

Unlike the personal income tax paid to the provincial and federal governments the property taxes paid to municipalities do not rise or fall as personal income rises or falls.

Rising property taxes are an issue for individuals on fixed incomes and those that have experienced a decrease in income due to the loss of a job or a business or reduced hours of work.

A curious phenomena has arisen during the current municipal election campaign.

The annual property tax and utility charge survey produced by the City of Edmonton shows St. Albert has the highest municipal property taxes in the Alberta Capital Region in 2009.

A number of candidates have concluded high taxes result in high costs being imposed on the owners of residential property within the city. A number of policies have been proposed for curbing or cutting municipal spending.

Interestingly enough, the Edmonton survey actually shows homeowners of comparable properties in high tax St. Albert have lower homeownership costs than their Edmonton counterparts.

The following points should be noted:

Significant differences in the market value of comparable residential properties located in different municipal jurisdictions will result in significant differences in the mortgage payments made by the purchasers of the properties.

Differences in mortgage payments must be combined with differences in property taxes in order to determine the difference in the net costs of home ownership in different municipalities

The City of Edmonton survey did not set out the difference that exists in the market value of the three bedroom bungalows it used in making intermunicipal tax comparisons among Alberta Capital Region municipalities. Only the property tax and utility charge differences were shown.

Table 1 shows how the value of the standard three bedroom bungalows used in the Edmonton survey is derived.

The St. Albert bungalow is valued at $317,120 versus $358,451 in Edmonton – a difference of $41,430.

The difference in property taxes amounts to $733 per annum in favour of Edmonton.

A variety of different assumptions can be made; however, if a 25 year amortization period is chosen and a minimum down payment is assumed it can beshown after a variety of interest rate options are explored that the lower mortgage payments on the standard three bedroom St. Albert bungalow off-set the Edmonton tax advantage by a very large margin.

Table 1: A Comparison of Total Property Taxes, Tax Rates and
	the Value of a Three Bedroom Bungalow in Edmonton and St. Albert in 2009 (1)(2)(3)
		Edmonton	. St. Albert
	Municipal Taxes ($)	1,419	2,152
	Residential Mill Rate	3.9587	6.7882
	Assessment Value ($)	358,451	317,021

(1) The Municipal Taxes were obtained from the City of Edmonton, “2009 Residential

Property Taxes and Utility Charges Survey, Dec. 2009”

(2) Mill rates were obtained from Municipal Profiles Data Base, Government of Alberta,

September 19, 2010.

(3 )Assessed Value = Property Taxes /Mill Rate

The favourable cost position enjoyed by the St. Albert homeowner vis-à-vis their Edmonton counterpart is improved once utility charges are introduced into the analysis since St. Albert utility charges are relatively low and Edmonton’s are relatively high.(St. Albert’s more limited use of franchise fees is a factor in holding utility costs down.)

The introduction of provincial school taxes to the analysis further widens the cost gap in favour of the St. Albert property owner since the provincial education levy is higher on the Edmonton bungalow.

.The more inclusive the coverage (all the tax components and utility charges plus the mortgage payments) the greater is the cost advantage enjoyed by the St. Albert bungalow owner.

The foregoing discussion has focused on the role property taxes, utility charges and mortgage payments play in affecting homeownership costs. Attention needs to be directed towards a myriad of other factors ranging from intermunicipal differences in the quality and quantity of municipal services, commuting time and travel costs and environmental factors such as air quality and noise levels.

St. Albert Property Tax Caps in Election 2010: Fact versus Fiction

2010-09-30T12:16:00.001-07:00

St. Albert residents will elect a new City Council on Oct. 18.

I attended the St. Albert Taxpayers forum at the Arden theatre on Sept. 28. A member of the audience asked the Council candidates to indicate whether they would support holding property tax increases to a 1.5 percent level for each of the next 2 years.

Quite surprisingly some of the Council candidates raised their hand and agreed to support this proposition.

Obviously capping property taxes at a low level while continuing to provide the same quality and quantity of services per capita to a population in a growing municipality is something the overwhelming majority of the St. Albert population would heartily endorse.

On the other hand candidates recommending a property tax cap that is not based on a well thought out and researched budget plan deserve to be severely censored by the St. Albert electorate when election day rolls around.

Will a 1.5 percent property tax increase in 2011 and 2012 result in significant cuts to existing City programs and services? If so which ones and by how much? Will capital projects have to be postponed? Will wage freezes and/or lay-offs in the municipal civil service be necessary in order to hold spending down? Will a host of City fees and charges be boosted to try and cover some of the revenue shortfalls?

No one can provide answers to these questions at this time. The reason is the 2011 city budget will not be tabled until well after the election and the new Council is sworn in.

Specific Details Regarding Taxes and Expenditures Are Determined at Budget Time

The basis for determining why certain City programs should be continued and expanded and others discontinued or reduced or new ones created are best made at budget time when all of the information needed to make such decisions is made available to both Council and the general public.

At budget time the professional staff responsible for managing and administering the City’s affairs present a budget they believe will best serve the interest in the public corporation called the City of St. Albert. The tabling of this budget is the starting point for informed budget deliberations that focus on both the revenue as well as the expenditures needed to run the municipality.

At the end of the budgetary process City Council may have increased, markedly reduced or left the budget mostly unchanged. The point to note is any changes made to the original budget are based on the input of its staff, all of the members of council and members of the public who care to make representations at various points in the budget deliberations.

The final budget is a document that carefully weighs the needs of a city against the revenues required to run it. Thousands of hours of work and effort is required to prepare and finalize it.

Conclusion:

Some of the first time members running for council made a serious economic policy mistake in supporting a 1.5 percent tax cap for each of the next two years. There is simply no rational economic basis for making such a commitment at this point in time.

A statement made in the heat of the moment at an election forum in the first week of a campaign by a person engaged in their first political campaign is one thing. Adherence to a bad policy throughout a campaign is another.

Some of the candidates who supported the 1.5 percent tax cap have excellent credentials. The City needs members on Council who will carefully scrutinize public spending and work hard to minimize the magnitude of the taxes levied on property owners.

I am going to monitor the progress of the tax cappers over the course of the next two weeks to see if the pro cap group realize they can’t finalize their position on property taxes for 2011 without first examining the budget and weighing the needs of the city against all of the revenues needed to fund it.

The Environmental Impact of the Alberta Oil Sands Development As Seen Through Foreign Eyes

2008-01-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

It is disconcerting, to say the least, to see Alberta through the eyes of some of the "environmentally conscious" media residing south of the Canada/USA border.

The following article is contained in the Climate Control News Archive (http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org/blog). The source is: " Alberta’s Tar Sands Operations Take the Unsustainability Prize", Duluth News Tribune, December 17, 2007.

“In the [Athabasca River, 650 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border in northern Alberta], fish are speckled with shiny, wart-like blisters. And in the tiny Indian village of Fort Chipewyan, people are coming down with leukemia, bile duct cancer and other diseases. Those who aren’t physically sick are worried sick. Much of their unease is directed upstream… [where] fleets of dinosaur-sized trucks and shovels larger than two-car garages are tearing apart a rich mosaic of woods and wetlands to extract some of the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet — more than two-thirds of which is exported to the U.S… The stockpile of energy under Alberta’s swampy woodlands, an estimated 175 billion barrels of oil, is the largest reserve in the Western Hemisphere and the second largest on Earth, behind Saudi Arabia… On the ground, a sign at one of the oldest operations, Syncrude-Canada’s Mildred Lake mine north of Fort McMurray… [declares that] ‘since operations began in 1978, we’ve moved over 1.4 billion tons of overburden,’ referring to the rock and soil over bitumen deposits. ‘This is more dirt than was moved for the Great Wall of China, the Suez Canal, the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the 10 largest dams in the world, combined!’… ‘There is nothing on this planet that compares with the destruction going on there,’ said David Schindler [of] the University of Alberta, Edmonton. ‘If there were a global prize for unsustainable development, the oil sands would be the clear winner.’”

As Albertans know the Athabasca Tar Sands is one of the main engines of economic growth in the Province. It is well known there are both costs as well as benefits associated with the development of this resource. It is reasonable to assume the scale of the negative environmental effects will grow as the oil sands are exploited more extensively. This suggests there may be environmental limits to the rate of economic growth that can be sustained within the province.

The specific question Albertans and other Canadians need to answer is: Has the development of the tar sands really destroyed the fish in the Athabasca River, caused cancer and generally severely impacted the physical and mental health of the aboriginal population in Fort Chipewyan and resulted in a level of destruction unparalleled anywhere else on the planet?

I certainly can't answer that question definitively; however, I "believe" the answer is no.

If such charges were proven to be true it would amount to an environmental call to arms. All Albertans and the rest of Canada would have to take immediate steps to remedy such a situation.

Unfortunately, the average citizen has little access to valid third party information that could be trusted and used to form an informed opinion on the environmental impact of various aspects of the tar sands development. Parts of the green revolution currently sweeping the world are based on good science and sound methodology while other aspects are based on beliefs and conviction rather than facts.

Consequently,few Albertans believe such allegations printed in the Duluth paper are true. The population tends to divide itself into two groups. One believes such allegations are valid while the other, the majority of the population, simply shrugs their collective shoulders and goes about their business.

Albertans are no fools. The province is highly urbanized. The population is among the best educated and best paid in Canada.

In addition, the province has some of the leading University based research institutions in Canada. With a few notable exceptions the professorial staff of these Universities are not speaking out and painting a doomsday scenario regarding the environmental degradation resulting from development of the Tar Sands.

Despite all of the comforting thoughts that can be marshaled to support the "all-is-well" position I find myself wondering what the total environmental and economic impact of all the proposed oil sands development will be on our province as the presently proposed oil sands projects are brought to fruition over the course of the next ten years. The list of new projects that are slated to start is lengthy and there is no question the collective impact will be far greater than anything we have seen to this point in time.

How well are the public's environmental interests being protected by the Provincial government, the Federal Government,Industry, Environmental Groups. Who is monitoring the health of the aboriginal population in the area?

Lastly who, if anyone, is responsible for compiling a list of the environmental, economic and health related analyses and studies that have been carried-out or are being carried-out that are pertinent to the future development and sustainability of various tar sands developments within Alberta. Who has access to such studies?

Is there any one reliable source that a non-aligned, non-radicalized citizen of the Province could refer to in order to be updated on what the impact of the future oil sands development can reasonably be expected to be in the foreseeable future?

Like it or not Albertans are in the midst of one of the great environmental debates that is occurring in the first part of the 21st century.

I don't know about you; however, I think I am going to have to try to investigate matters and see what materials and studies are available that could be used to determine if matters are under control and sensible plans are being set out for monitoring, regulating and reporting on future tar sands developments.

If any of you have been down this route before me and have some observations and/or sources you would like to share I would appreciate hearing from you.

2008 has all the promise of being a very busy year.
Cheers,
Richard Plain

The Servus Place Deficit and the Need for a New 2008 Budget

2007-12-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

In 2006 the St. Albert Council passed the first two year budget in the City's history.

This two year budget allowed the past Council to extend its policy mandate for an extra year and set a budget for 2008 as well as 2007.

As matters currently stand four members of the 2004-07 Council (Crouse, Bracko, Burrows and Garritty) were re-elected for another three year term. Unfortunately, the three new members of City Council (Jones, Lemieux and Watamaniuk) have been placed in the unhappy position of being held responsible for a budget they have had no part in preparing and the people who elected them have been denied the right to have these new Councillors play a major role in setting the 2008 budget.

This has never happened before in the history of St. Albert. All members of a newly elected Council have played an equal role in setting the new budget.

In the past a budget committee has been struck, City administrators would appear in front of the budget committee and answer questions and account for their past as well as their proposed future spending. Business plans were reviewed and input was invited from the general public and the business community.

No equivalent budgetary activity has been initiated by the present Council even though the 2008 budget prepared over a year ago was largely based upon the 2007 budget. Instead a piecemeal approach is being taken towards trying to salvage the two year budget system.

The Servus Place business plan is unsound. It will generate a multi-million dollar deficit in 2008. The City administration claims it will be months before an outside consultant will be able to advise them if the Servus Place problem can be fixed in whole or in part.

Some of the specific reasons the Council Budget committee needs to swing into action are as follows:

(1) If expenditure reductions are going to be made to 2008 City programs to partially offset the negative impact of the projected large Servus Place deficit on taxpayers then it is absolutely essential that such cuts are made as early as possible in the new budget year;

(2) If cuts aren’t going to be made to existing programs and if new program spending isn’t going to be postponed then consideration has to be given towards determining how much of the excess spending will be covered by tax increases and how much of the new grant money flowing from the provincial and federal government programs will be diverted and earmarked for Servus Place;

(3) (3)Certain of the City's reserve funds were drained by the past City Council in the run up to the election in October. Matters are compounded by the fact the present Council has stripped capital reserve funds from Servus Place and used the so-called surplus from “savings” on the capital borrowings ear-marked for the facility to staunch the large short run operating deficit; and

(4) If the user fees levied on individuals and groups using Servus Place are to make a contribution towards lowering the deficit then City Council and its administration need to make some decisions in this regard and invite input from various recreation user groups.

City Council needs to act quickly and decisively and pass a new Budget for 2008. This means the normal annual budget-making process followed by the City of St. Albert needed to be implemented at the beginning of November.

Prepared by Richard Plain (PhD Econ)

Dec. 11, 2007