By Mike Renzella
The Haldimand Press
HALDIMAND—Last week, Haldimand’s new Council gathered for two in-depth orientation sessions where County staff gave a breakdown of how the municipal organization functions and the major issues facing Haldimand both presently and down the road.
The first session provided Council with a look at the County’s organizational structure, the key principles and policies dictating the municipal planning and decision-making process, and the importance of a strong relationship between Council and County staff members.
The second session dove into some of the major issues facing Haldimand, how the County is planning for them, and the role Council will play in the process.
“Today is an opportunity to talk about two or three major things Council will deal with on a frequent basis and the background on issues relating to growth, how we manage growth, how we finance growth,” said County CAO Craig Manley.
Manager of Community and Development Services Mike Evers provided a breakdown on the County’s growth management plan: “Growth is something that’s complicated. It comes with a lot of challenges and proper planning for it requires detailed analysis, working across departments. At times, it requires difficult decisions to be made in terms of directions taken.”
He said the key issues related to growth are how to financially plan for needs, operational and infrastructure impacts from growth, and how to plan for diversification of resident needs and wants.
“Population growth in the county is not a blip. We’re into our ninth year of steadily increasing growth pressures and significant development activity taking place on the ground. In a little less than a decade, we’ve moved from issuing 60 to 70 residential building permits a year to pushing up towards 500 building permits a year now,” said Evers. “We have to comprehensively plan for, execute on, and fund significant infrastructure and facility demands.”
As dictated by the Province, that growth forecast will see 30,000 new residents, 12,700 new homes, and 11,000 new jobs by 2051.
“That is a series of numbers that are non-negotiable that have been assigned to us. We have to respond to those through all the planning work that we do,” said Evers.
On the level of control locally, he added, “We do have some obvious or not-so-obvious control over certain things, for instance, where this growth goes and the staging of that growth…. At the granular site level, we have control over the layout of projects, amenity space provisions, the way buildings look and function amongst other things.”
Manager of Engineering and Capital Works Tyson Haedrich provided an overview of how the County plans for infrastructure development to accommodate the growth, noting, “All the stuff we do is based on asset management principles.”
“Between now and 2025 there will be a lot of work done that will involve public consultation and input from Council and staff. Right now, our financial plan isn’t connected to our assets and how we manage them. In 2025, that has to come together,” he said of the growing importance of having a plan for managing County assets. “We’ll be making decisions about what levels of service are we going to provide to our residents, how will we fund that…. This Council will have some pretty important decisions to make as we approach that 2025 deadline.”
“Many of these major projects are directly driven by development and growth and are development-charge funded. Some aren’t, but the vast majority are,” said Haedrich.
Manager of Financial and Data Services Mark Merritt offered his input on how the County funds the type of growth dictated by the Province: “There are limited tools available to municipalities to fund growth. Fundamentally, one of the County’s key principles is ‘growth pays for growth’.”
He continued, “That’s standard across municipalities, however it can be affected by a number of things…. We try to utilize these tools as best we can within the legislative framework.”
Another major challenge facing the County and Council is how to best mitigate some of the impacts expected to be brought about by the rollout of Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act.
On development charges, “Every year, we index our fees for inflation. Last year was the largest inflationary index we’ve seen since I’ve been in this sector…. That makes sure we don’t lose the purchasing power of that money. What the Province has done through Bill 23 is they’ve stepped in and set a limit for how much we can index each year. That can be very problematic. If inflation remains at the current level of 7% but the Province limits us to a 2% increase, how do we make up that difference?”
Additionally, the new bill sets limitations on the ability to use development charges for land purchases, with Merritt stating that a lot of the County’s growth needs require land purchases: “There are provisions that the Premier could put in about what things aren’t eligible. There’s no description of what types of lands aren’t eligible yet.”
He said that the bill also removes the ability to fund affordable housing through development charges, adding, “Affordable housing is a main issue across the province. The Provincial and Federal levels of government are asking us to build more affordable housing, yet they’ve taken away one of the major funding sources we would’ve used to do that.”
He said it’s imperative that Council, within the next two years, gathers “all the inputs that go into developing a long-term financial plan for growth…. We’re going to have to make some tough decisions when we’re looking at the financing plan. That may mean timing or prioritizing certain developments over others, or they’ll have to be delayed until we find other revenue sources.”
Merritt believes the Province sees excessive development charges as hampering the development of needed housing, but asserts that thinking is flawed: “I’d argue that they didn’t really look at what the financial implications were to municipalities. They’ve come out after and claimed they will make us whole – I’m not sure how that’s going to work.”
He continued, “Their thought, which might be coming from the development community quite honestly, is that we’re harbouring all these reserves and have all the money needed to do these developments but just aren’t doing it…. Quite frankly, that’s not the case.”
He said the County has a lot to learn yet about the implications of these changes, noting, “We’ll have to see how and what we can fund moving forward; it’s made it more challenging.”
Manley echoed Evers, calling growth an “extremely complicated” issue. “Within the area of growth there are certain restrictions in terms of your ability to say no to it…. This generally leads to some tension as development comes forward in terms of the density, the scale, the number of units, those sorts of things.… These are all issues Council is facing.”
In terms of key administrative goals, Manley highlighted talent attraction and retention and the development of a long-term financial growth plan as key goals for the next Council term.
With orientation complete and the stakes laid out on the table, Haldimand Council convened this week to begin the work of facing these challenges and finding solutions to them. Stay tuned to The Press for news and coverage as our new Council comes together to plan for the next 30 years and beyond here in Haldimand.
