Realistic Ways I Plan to Fight the Rise of Property Taxes

Slowing the Sprawl

Oshawa has consistently added more neighbourhoods without the necessary infrastructure, seemingly to help pay for the infrastructure from the last neighbourhood, getting stuck in a pyramid-scheme of sorts. I would like to see the sprawl stop for a while to allow the infrastructure and services to catch up with the existing tax revenue which in turn helps lower the necessary expenses down the road, ultimately helping lead to lower increases in property taxes, and if done well enough then even reductions with enough time. I do not want to make empty promises, so I am being realistic that the infrastructure deficit in Oshawa is huge and will take time to relieve the taxpayers of that burden.

While more housing is needed, we cannot bring it in at the sacrifice of everyone already living here. With property taxes effectively passing through to tenants renting, fighting the rise of property taxes is a key step in allowing more affordable rental prices as well.

Selling Oshawa Better to Industry - More Jobs + Shared Tax Burden

Currently Oshawa is not promoting itself well to attract more industry. Oshawa promotes the low to non-existent developer fees as a benefit to commercial and industrial businesses, seemingly claiming that they will go elsewhere if they have to pay developer fees. From my experience in engineering and helping plan large scale facilities in the hundreds of millions of dollars, this is not true. Larger companies are making decisions based on planning for multiple decades of stability and lower operating expenses, not year one benefits. Even worse, offering low developer fees while the city is in an infrastructure deficit signals to larger companies that there may not be stability for long, or timelines may be impacted if the necessary infrastructure is not in place in time, leading to looking elsewhere.

So what should we do? We need to show off what Oshawa really has going for it. Notably we have Durham College and Ontario Tech, with available space within existing infrastructure near a major highway, the 407. This means available college and university graduates helping stimulate the workforce, available internships from students for lower cost labour and a pathway to finding good full-time employees, and improving the availability of student jobs.

To build on it, we have high schools like Eastdale CVI with numerous trade classes with the Specialist High Skills Major for trades, and we can get more apprentice opportunities if we help skilled trade workers start their own companies locally if they want, with Section 107 and 108 of the Municipal Act allowing grants and loans through small business counselling, which the city could offer with a caveat that they take on an apprentice. We have a large apprenticeship gap right now, so we can help new businesses take off as well as help get more apprenticeships in the skilled trades.

With all of this, Oshawa can really be an enticing choice for companies to set up shop while stimulating the job market:

Local Available Labour:

• SHSM -> More apprenticeship opportunities -> More skilled trades workers
• Durham College Graduates
• Ontario Tech Graduates
• Internships from current students
• Less relocation costs from local labour

Lower Transportation Costs:

• Schools share a campus
• Campus near to the 407
• Easy 407 access = less administrative headaches for companies planning shipping routes through more city streets = lower possible OPEX

Leveraging New Industrial Possibilities:

• Ontario Tech is one of the few places to study Nuclear Engineering
• OPG, Bruce Power, and other companies are researching SMR (Small Modular Reactor) technology
• Opportunities for higher level research partnered with OPG and Ontario Tech
• Opportunities for manufacturing around SMR components
• Opportunities for graduates to have available jobs in their field nearby

However you want to consider it, Oshawa could be selling itself to potential large industrial and commercial companies significantly better than we currently are, and we have the opportunity to share the tax burden with more industry, improve the job market significantly, and improve apprenticeship access for more skilled trades workers with or without industry.

Improved City Staff Efficiency

To clarify, I am not calling to cut city jobs.  I have spoken with some city staff who have explained where large inefficiencies are, such as permits and applications going through multiple departments unnecessarily, where I would like to suggest reviews of those systems and empower city staff to highlight the issues they see on a day-to-day basis. Understandably as technology advanced, they added some tweaks that never had a second look, so there is plenty of room for streamlining much of the office portion of city staff work without needing to lower staff. What this does is help allow the staff to spend more time on where they are actually needed, helping lower the need for additional staff which helps bring the budget down.

Better Communication with Emergency Services

I spoke with the DRPS for example who have stated that their $1.1B long term plan is open to negotiation as they have critical items that they would prioritize over others, but the current councillors do not engage in much discussion with them. Frankly, even when I met with them, they said they reached out to all regional candidates in Ward 1 and I was the only one who responded and met with them. I want to improve these lines of communication because if we can shave millions of dollars off of that budget item then that is another layer of savings that the current council has been seemingly ignoring.

This goes for all emergency services. I am not saying to slash everything, but through improving the communication with emergency services we can better determine what is needed to make the most impact and keep them safe, while trimming out what may be unnecessary. An example would be some of the consultant fees used on a lot of the documents from long term plans to building design. We can be reusing many aspects of these plans, and many of them don't need expensive overhauls constantly. We can communicate with the emergency services to see what they need, not a consultant. For example, we don't need a consultant to tell us that the firefighters could need a heavy rescue vehicle by the 407 with how many accidents happen, the firefighters already know what they deal with every day. We can also be working with other cities to determine some of these needs without requiring heavy consultant fees.

Speaking as someone who has had to deal with many consultant firms in various industries, consultants are very expensive and are typically just insurance so higher execs can justify what they have already decided and blame the consultants if it goes poorly. There are naturally times where consultants are needed, but the amount they are used currently is too much for what they have been offering.