City has to play geographical bad guy in Corman Park land annexations
Taking a line from Canadian songstress Avril Lavigne, the relationship between the City of Saskatoon and the Rural Municipality of Corman Park is complicated.
While each desires a relationship of collaboration and co-operation, land and money often interfere with the best of intentions.
Saskatoon is one of a few unique Canadian cities completely surrounded by one rural municipality. If Saskatoon requires more land for development, there is only one option. Having to negotiate with only one party may appear to simplify matters. However, when the relationship gets rocky, there’s nowhere else to turn.
Saskatoon’s boundaries are continually expanding. Increases in population, and subsequent housing and service demands, cannot all be met by infill projects. There’s no place to go but out. This means that each and every time Saskatoon needs to widen its boundaries, the city has no choice but to take over land from Corman Park.
Corman Park, understandably, often feels put upon as it watches its land base and, more importantly, its pool of taxpayers, eroded by the city.
Often the reason the city wants to expand is a lucrative development project waiting in the wings. The RM would rather these projects be developed within its own boundaries, as opposed to the city. That way the RM collects the increased taxes, as opposed to another municipality.
A good example is the Willows development. Dundee (now Dream Developments) wanted to build a golf-course community surrounding the Willows golf course.
The problem? At the time, the Willows land was located in Corman Park. Dundee was not interested in building the development in the RM.; the developer wanted it to be part of the city. Why, you may ask? Well, one of the primary reasons is the city won’t let anyone outside city boundaries hook into its sanitary-sewer system (which is a smart decision on Saskatoon’s part). Dundee wasn’t interested in building a luxury community without city services.
However, while the RM may want the development in its community, arguably it would never happen anyway because developers won’t build unless the development is part of the City of Saskatoon. Further, it is questionable whether the RM has the resources to build out full city neighbourhoods, or to provide the same policing, fire and other services. (Some may argue about whether suburban development actually costs the city more money in the long run, but that is a topic for another column.)
The same debate that took place with the Willows development is re-emerging with the innovative Solair solar powered community proposed for the southeast corner of the city. A segment of the Solair plan is inside city boundaries, and the other part would be located in Corman Park. Arbutus Properties, the developer of Solair, wants the city to annex the RM land, so the development would be fully within city boundaries.
The reeve of Corman Park has already thrown some shade on the solar powered project, saying that the City of Saskatoon can’t just cherry-pick lands in Corman Park for development. However, given that Saskatoon is surrounded by just one RM, it really doesn’t have a choice as to which RM it needs to expand into — the land must always come from Corman Park. The city is viewed as the geographical bad guy every time.
To be fair, the city pays for any land annexed from Corman Park. The price is typically 15 times the municipal portion of taxes from the annexed land.
It appears the reeve of Corman Park is trying to increase leverage on the RM’S tax compensation for the Solair development. Even at 15 times assessed values, the total payout to the RM would be minimal as the land is all labelled agricultural, for which the municipal portion of the taxesisquitelow.
The reeve’s game is to play a bit of hardball and see if the city will raise the compensation to something higher, which is precisely what the city wants to avoid. The real issue for Saskatoon is how long a developer waits for the municipalities to resolve their issues before deciding to build elsewhere.