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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!

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.

Although Charlottetown has experienced a small boom over the last few years in downtown office construction, it is also quite apparent that we have a problem finding tenants for some of our existing office and commercial buildings. In some cases, as companies were setting up shop here, these vacant buildings were passed over in favor of new construction because the market, increasingly, demands a different kind of office space — larger footprints, providing more square footage per floor.

In other cases, property owners seem unwilling to lease their space. Are they just content to pay the property taxes on a vacant building rather than pay for expensive upgrades and renovations and take their risks in a competitive market? If yes, the provincial Real Property Assessment Act is potentially underwriting that risk averse trend, costing the City of Charlottetown unknown thousands (millions?) in tax revenue, not to mention the eyesore of dilapidated, boarded-up buildings in our downtown core.

The reason is right in the definitions on page 1 & 2 of the Act. Commercial is property that is used by a business. If you don’t have a business running you default to non-commercial.

(d) “commercial realty” means real property owned by the Crown or any person, used or occupied by any industry, trade, business, profession, vocation or government business and includes real property used or occupied

(i) “non-commercial realty” means all real property except commercial realty;

Essentially, once the business moves out a property no longer meets the definition of a commercial property in the Assessment Act. And as you can see from this table, that’s quite a significant drop in your tax bill, and all you have to do is close shop!

So this has nothing to do with municipal zoning (i.e. commercial vs. residential) which is a planning tool, but rather how the province defines properties for assessment purposes. In my opinion, once your building is vacant and in disrepair, this is an incentive to avoid the risks of re-entering the commercial property market. And by all accounts this is one source of the problem in Charlottetown.

What is the answer? Are commercial tax rates just too high, generally? Would forcing vacant property owners to pay the commercial rate really be enough incentive for them to get back in the game and make a go of it? Or is the commercial rate just too much of a burden for some property owners to overcome?

I don’t have the answers to these questions. But there is discussion on council about trying to correct this situation and I hope we do what’s best to create a vibrant and successful commercial environment in downtown Charlottetown.

The City of Charlottetown would require an amendment to the Highway Traffic Act to allow us to double fines for school zone speeders. At a meeting of council on Monday night, it was decided to send a renewed request to the new provincial government for enabling legislation for the use of photo radar (the City has made no decision on the use of photo radar, but we would like the ability to use it if we wish to).

An argument was made that we should not ask for both photo radar legislation, and an increase in fines in school zones, as we were unlikely to be granted both, an argument I did not understand. My position was that the province should be willing to give munipalities every tool we require to deal with a problem that many see as a growing safety concern. In the end, it was decided to send an official request for both; photo radar legislation, and an amendment to allow for the doubling of fines in school zones (and construction zones). This request will be sent by City administration, but I have taken the time to write personally to my MLA (Premier Ghiz) about the issue. If you feel that one or both of these requests are important, please contact your MLA as well.