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The boys and I were at the Victoria Park playground last night. A section of the upper level rail has come undone on the blue/green piece of equipment. It is well anchored by the climbing pole that is attached but, nevertheless, could be dangerous and needs to be fixed ASAP. I’ve contacted Parks & Recreation staff to make them aware.

The recently introduced provincial budget made the 34-cent issue disappear, and I don’t mean they resolved it by eliminating provincial property taxes in full-service municipalities, as the Federation of PEI Municipalities (and of course, Charlottetown) has continually asked.

No, the problem, by all accounts, is only getting worse for the City, which makes me question the point of all those intergovernmental meetings I attended that were supposed to result — I was lead to believe — in a better deal for the City. Senior City staff are still meeting with their provincial counterparts in an attempt make sense of it all, which I’m told is not an easy task. I will attempt to explain it when I’ve figured it out myself.

Even Stratford is upset. Stratford!

Council gets lobbied occasionally on specific issues by specific groups, but usually on a reactive, issue by issue basis. Volunteer boards will coordinate email and phone campaigns during the budget process to make the case for their grant requests; the Advocates for This Park or Friends of That Park can be very forceful in making their preferences known; members of business groups and other outside agencies are appointed to City advisory boards to protect their interests, etc. But the bulk of the communication we get, at least that I get, is from individuals with their individual ideas, opinions, requests and complaints.

Earlier this evening, during a chat initiated through the “Chat with Rob” feature on this blog (which is becoming more and more popular), my anonymous chat partner — known only to me as the person who comments on the Guardian website as “PFA” — directed me to scaledown.ca, a blog that aims to “promote the cultural identity, social fabric and economic prosperity of Windsor, Ontario through open discussion and grass-roots advocacy.”

While scanning that site I found this post about the formation of a Downtown Resident Association. While we do have Downtown Charlottetown Inc. here, it is very much business oriented. Although I don’t live downtown myself, I do work there and I live close enough to feel I have a stake in its continued vitality and livability, so I find the idea of a group like this very appealing, both from my points of view as a resident and a councillor. As the author of the post points out:

If we go to the decision makers to voice our opinions, visions, and complaints by ourselves, we likely aren’t going to get anywhere. But one unified voice representing many – that’s power in any democratic setting. 

In fact, I’d welcome any number of associations that could engage and advise council. There are many talented and creative people who, speaking as one voice, could influence council to make better, more progressive, more informed decisions. How about the Charlottetown Amateur Urban Planners Association?

I sent an email to all members of council and some City staff tonight, with a link to an article from another municipality. I highlighted my favourite line:

“‘When it comes down to making choices between cars and people, we invariably choose cars. This is outdated and marks us for the civic dinosaur that we are.’

“Can you tell I’m not very excited about building a new parking garage?”

No responses yet.

UPDATE, day later: Received supportive responses from one staff member and one councillor.

One of the highlights of the provincial budget that was unveiled today was this:

The [Island Community] fund will be used to help finance a new parking garage in downtown Charlottetown that will be part of a multi-million dollar redevelopment in the downtown core that includes a hotel and condos at the Shops of the Confederation Court Mall;

The developer can not meet the physical parking requirements for this project(s). The Zoning & Development Bylaw allows developers to pay the City cash for each space, if they cannot provide the necessary parking (which is calculated by a formula). Tomorrow, at a special public meeting, City Council will vote to allocate all of the parking cash payable from this development to the Charlottetown Area Development Corporation in order to construct a new parking garage. The City owns and maintains the three current parkades, but CADC will build, own and operate the new parkade, if the resolution passes. This is seen as an attractive proposition because the City’s only contribution is a one-time transfer of the cash-in-lieu paid by the developer. CADC will finance the rest with money from the province.

Also, the City recently received the final draft report of the Downtown Charlottetown Parking Strategy. The construction of a new parking garage is not central to that strategy, and it is clear that a new parking garage will not solve all of our parking woes. I have indicated to Council that my support for tomorrow’s resolution is contingent on the Parking Strategy being substantially implemented, although I will have no guarantee that it will before the meeting.

An article in yesterday’s Guardian, in which I figured, made reference to the “34-cent issue.” This has been a bone of contention between the City of Charlottetown and the provincial government for many years, but it is not well understood by the public and attempts at succinct explanations are not always successful. For example, the article states:

…the province, which collects property taxes for the city, takes $1.50 per resident and gives back $1.16, keeping the other 34 cents. In other words, the province charges a fee for providing the service…

The first sentence is sort of correct, almost, but the second confuses two issues. The City does, in fact, pay a fee to the province for administering the collection of municipal property taxes. Last year, that fee was approximately $417,000. This is not a tax. It is just an administration fee to collect the tax, and is separate from the 34-cent issue (The fee itself is another bone of contention, because when the federal government stopped charging GST to municipalities, the province promptly clawed back the savings the City realized by imposing the admin fee, but I digress.)

Another blurb caught my attention in the Guardian article. I may be nitpicking here, but I think it should be clarified. The article states:

the ‘34-cent issue’, as it’s been dubbed, has cost city taxpayers $5 million.

Again, technically correct, but I would add to the end of the sentence the words “last year alone.” The amount has grown with assessments, but this has cost City taxpayers millions of dollars, each year, since the scheme was hatched.

If you’ve made it this far, you might be asking, “Yeah, we pay taxes. So what? Tell me something I don’t know.” Well, for starters, there is no other full-service municipality in Canada where the provincial government keeps a portion of property taxes. Property taxes are generally supposed to be used to deliver services to… properties. In Charlottetown, it is the municipal government that delivers all the services, such as snow plowing, water & sewer, police & fire services, street paving, sidewalk construction, etc.

So, in Charlottetown you pay a residential rate of $1.67 per $100 of assessed value, but only $1.33 goes to the city. The other 34-cents goes directly into the province’s general revenues to be spent in any way — and any place — the government sees fit, whether it’s plowing the roads in Souris or subsidizing the beef plant in Albany. That is, the City delivers services using only 80% of the taxes paid by its residents. The other 20% is a tax on Charlottetown; a disincentive to live here; a cash cow for the province; a transfer payment to the rest of the province. It is unfair.

City taxpayers are already struggling to pay their taxes. Charlottetown, like every municipality, is struggling to provide essential services, build and repair infrastructure, and manage ballooning costs using revenue that is mainly derived from property tax. But with the baseline set at 34-cents — the starting point at which you actually start to receive something in return for your taxes — it is impossible to generate sufficient revenue without creating an unreasonable burden on City taxpayers. The tax rate in Charlottetown has actually dropped in recent years, but the City — like most municipalities — has relied on increases in assessments to balance its budget. If the province would simply eliminate the 34-cent “Charlottetown Tax”, and treat us the same way every provincial government treats its full-service municipalities, the residential tax rate would immediately drop from $1.67 to $1.33. The City of Charlottetown could then begin to slowly increase the rate as required, with proper budget debate and justification, so that we could deliver a level of service that is proportionate with the price residents are paying for it.

I received an email tonight from a resident of my ward who would like to see the inside lane of the Victoria Park roadway closed to vehicle traffic.

The Guardian, at the very top of their website on Sunday evening, is announcing an “exclusive” for tomorrow’s edition, promising a “huge (five column) colour computer-generated photo of the proposed Upton Farm concert venue in Charlottetown.”

Keep in mind, this is NOT the site plan for any concert that may or may not take place at this venue. It is only a mock-up for the purpose of demonstrating the site’s potential. It is marketing material.

You can view the full image here, computer-generated inflatable beer cans and all. (I reduced the size of the original image because it was a very large high resolution file)

UPDATE: One more thing to note — the city recently passed a resolution to allow the ONE-TIME use of Upton Farm as a concert venue. There are no plans to make this a permanent concert site.

I’ve been hearing from members of the Upton Farm Preservation Network since 7am this morning about the front page article in the Guardian concerning the sewer and water extension to Poplar Island for the new Cows Ice Cream factory.

Despite the perception created by some of the unfortunate quotes in the article, the city’s position has not changed with respect to Upton Farms; Council fully supports keeping the Farm green. At least two other Councillors and the Mayor have been in touch with Network members to clarify.

The developer is paying the city’s share for the extension down to Poplar Island, and the city is installing a small amount of supporting infrastructure to accommodate any future growth in demand in the area. That’s all.  The city pays virtually nothing for the expansion and reaps the benefit of a substantial property tax bill payable by the factory well into the future. It is in no way related to Canada Lands’ shelved plan to develop a portion of Upton Farm.

The City of Charlottetown is soliciting proposals for hosting the city’s website.

Update: download the RFP document here.

The calls and emails have been too numerous lately to post here in this space. Will resume posting them when (if?) the volume slows.

The height variance was granted by Planning Board last night for the new Fitzroy office building. The final design is seven stories, but the seventh floor is to be stepped back fifteen feet across the entire front, making the street side facade only six stories. And the previous concession of a twelve foot setback from the property to the immediate west is still part of the deal. This is supposed to be a high(er) quality building compared to some of the other office cubes that have sprung up around the city in recent years. Looking forward to seeing that particular empty space, that I pass several times per day, being filled up.