City Hall has set ambitious infill development goals but has fallen short of them. What is your view on the balance between infill and greenfield development, and what it mean for the city over the coming years? (This question was posed by Alex MacPherson of the StarPhoenix to all mayoral candidates)
The cost of running a city increases every year. Salaries go up, equipment needs to be replaced, and more services are offered. There are a lot of changes each year which have an effect on the tax base that pays for it all. The biggest cost that seems always to be overlooked is the effect of expansion. We worry about response times for fire trucks and the cost of adding new police officers to patrol areas but we don’t seriously look at the fact that expanding our city continually in such ways is the major driver of these costs. So many people are nothing but focused on expanding our city to half a million in the greater area, yet they are not focused on good development to 300,000 citizens. Even though our province is now reporting a net loss of population. The fast, easy way for our existing politicians and city officials is to grow outwards because that’s what they’ve always done in the past. In fact, the better thing for the city in the long term is to grow inwards as much as possible. As previously mentioned, fire halls around the city are required to cut response times yet their existing response times are now also a concern. The police station that services the entire city is centrally located yet every officer and every patrol car must start and finish from that location. Everything from garbage collection, snow removal, parks and recreation, all require vehicles and personnel to navigate further and further out each day to get to the worksite. My personal preference is that we do more infill or brownfield development. I can tell you that projects like Arbutus Solaire are not even on my radar as required for the next council term.