Chow calls a halt to proposed ‘rain tax’
“I’ve had better weeks,” Mayor Olivia Chow says on the phone Monday morning, with a laugh.
It’s almost a certainty that she spent her weekend dealing with the more than 62,000 complaints over notices of vacant home tax bills (most of them for homes that aren’t vacant) that hit homeowners late last week.
But even before that, she was dealing with what was suddenly an international outcry over what critics called a “rain tax” that they said she was implementing.
Thing is, she was just as surprised as those critics to see the proposal come forward. “I didn’t know it was coming, and I didn’t know the policy — if I had known it was coming I’d have gone over it with a finetoothed comb, which I then did.” Partly as a result, the announced public consultations this month have been “paused,” as the proposal goes back to the drawing board.
City staff identified a need to coordinate any plan with the new parking lot tax that’s in the works, since both proposals would target the same property owners for the same thing. But Chow says she and Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie (head of the infrastructure committee and someone who was around for earlier chapters of this debate) are conveying some further suggestions to city staff for inclusion in any new proposal.
A bit of history: the proposal, for a “stormwater charge” to help pay for improvements that prevent flooding in city streets and people’s basements, is intended to charge property owners a share of costs based on the amount of hard surfaces — like pavement and roofs — they have, since unlike areas like gardens and lawns, those surfaces pour water into public storm drains rather than absorbing them into the ground.
When the outcry about the “rain tax” hit, I wrote a defence of the concept behind it. At the time, I figured I’d look more closely at the details of the specific proposal as the hearings were getting underway, but right away I started hearing from people who support the concept but thought the proposal missed the mark.
And Chow says that was her reaction when she looked at it. One core principle she supports, she says, is that “the less your property is causing stormwater runoff, the less you pay.” This proposal didn’t accomplish that, she says, because homeowners were lumped together paying a flat rate. “I’m a homeowner. I have a front yard with ground cover. Next door to me, the front yard is paved. The policy that was going out for consultation just asked both of us to pay the same amount. Makes no sense,” she says.
Differing rates for properties with different surfaces — and incentives to make improvements to get discounts — were only available to large industrial and commercial properties.
The city bureaucrats, she says, told her they had no capacity to inspect every individual lot in the city to provide detailed analysis of each. “Then leave the homeowners alone!” she says. “If you don’t have the capacity, then don’t do it!” The city could offer incentives to homeowners to make improvements, she suggests. But not charges. “Why are we nailing the individual homeowners? Makes no sense.”
The majority of the problem, she says, is caused by large industrial and commercial properties, and that’s where the majority of the improvement from drainage upgrades and resurfacing with new materials can happen. That’s where she would like to see the focus.
She also says that on the water consumption bill part of the proposal, she noticed that owners of the smallest water meters would pay the highest rates. “Let’s say as a senior living by herself and doesn’t use much water,” she says, should pay the least. “That water service policy is exactly opposite. The smaller the meter, the more you pay. I thought, ‘What?’ ”
Ultimately, it will be the job of the city’s bureaucrats to consider Chow and McKelvie’s feedback before coming back with a revised policy. The city says there’s currently no specific timeline for that to happen, so it’s unlikely to be soon.
I asked Chow if, being blamed for this policy she didn’t know was coming and that she thinks needs significant revision, she felt blindsided. “It’s part of the job,” she says with another laugh. “You just go forward and do what needs to be done.”
She says in that way it’s like the vacant home tax problems she’s also trying to sort out. “I think we can all take a deep breath and say, ‘OK, we’ll work this out.’ Let’s be fair, let’s not be scared.
“People are barely hanging on in terms of their homes, you have to make life affordable for folks,” she says as she’s rushed off the phone by an assistant. “This thing is not working, and I’m cleaning it up.”