DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION
I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Community Improvement Plan (CIP) process.  As City staff noted in a May 29, 2006 report:  “Previous improvement plans for Queen Street involved expenditure of public funds which was never followed up with the expected private expenditures.”  CIP grant and loan programs require that this necessary private sector investment be made in order to trigger assistance from public funds.

I recognized that the CIP is the trigger to stimulating the necessary private investment.  I also recognized the importance of carrying out such a study for our other decaying downtown areas.  As Council’s representative on the Main & Ferry BIA, I repeatedly urged them to follow Queen Street’s lead.  The CIP study for Main & Ferry is currently underway.

I have always enthusiastically supported the Downtown CIP and the programs it contains for encouraging renewal and revitalization.  I continue to do so.  However, I also continue to harbour serious reservations about much of the subsequent Downtown Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP).

Council is expected to borrow some $36 million (which will have to be repaid, with interest, by City taxpayers) based on the conclusions of the SIP.  The SIP recommendations, however, are based on the findings of a Gibbs Planning marketing study which has never been seen by either City Council or City staff.  Without knowing the market conditions or assumptions made in the Gibbs study, Council has no way of knowing whether the SIP proposals are viable.

I am also deeply opposed to expropriation, especially when it is avoidable and runs contrary to common sense.  I have long known, based on conversations with City planners, that what Queen Street needs is gorge-view condos built at its eastern end to provide the residential mass necessary to stimulate business.  I understand this is precisely what one landowner plans to do with her property at the eastern end of Queen Street – land which is, under the SIP, now slated to be turned into parkland instead.  Remember: The SIP is merely one consulting group's vision, not the only possible plan.

I had other concerns as well.  Being absolutely certain that the SIP was watertight was essential to me, considering the level of expenditure of public tax dollars it calls for.   I did not have enough certainty about the infallibility of the Plan presented to Council to be able to support it. 
I am gravely concerned about the impact that implementing the SIP recommendations will have on our debt and on our ability to maintain our core infrastructure.  Our roads in particular have been allowed to seriously deteriorate.  I fear that implementing the SIP will mean we will not able to carry out vital infrastructure work.
A financial consultant’s report received by Council in the spring of 2006 warned that our long term debt will soon outpace our assessment growth and our debt burden will soon be at a level considered excessive.  This means our community will struggle to pay its debt obligations.  We may be overburdening our tax base and exceeding our ability to pay.

The debt that we would have to assume to carry out this particular SIP means either future reductions in municipal services or increases in taxes to maintain service levels.  I've had pensioners and lower income earners call me about past tax hikes, wondering, with their other costs (heating, insurance, Hydro, etc) escalating as well, how they are going to be able to afford to stay in their homes.  In the future, it could become the middle income earners wondering this too.

Two years ago, Council received an Infrastructure Management Report from staff engineers indicating that we had $65.7 million in water, sewer and road infrastructure work in need of IMMEDIATE attention then.  They also indicated that 23% of our roads were in poor or very poor condition. 

One month later, hired engineering consultants told Council that the longer our roads were left to deteriorate, the more they will cost the taxpayers in the long run.  Roads which have been neglected too long can no longer be repaired or rehabilitated, but must instead be reconstructed, at a cost of four to five times more.  Despite this, Council failed to budget enough to meet its current road needs, to maintain the status quo and save roads that could still be saved. 

How, then, can Council build and maintain a parking structure?  How can we afford a $13 million parking garage when we have not been able to maintain our basic infrastructure?  

Council needs to set responsible priorities – to take care of the basic infrastructure that we all rely on 24/7 to be in place to deliver potable water to our homes, to take away our sewage and not permit it to back up into our basements when it rains, to be there to transport us to wherever we have to go.  We need to take care of the nuts and bolts first. 

Those who are promoting a very costly immediate investment in the downtown talk about having vision.  I have vision too.  My vision is of Niagara Falls remaining an affordable place to live in the future. 
 
I believe we need to focus FIRST on taking care of that $65.7 million in water, sewer and road infrastructure work which our engineers told us, two years ago, was in need of IMMEDIATE attention.  Good fiscal management dictates that non-priority items be deferred until the pressing maintenance needs of our core infrastructure are met, for the benefit of ALL of the community.

This is also the direction given Council by the people of Niagara Falls surveyed last year as part of the Service Delivery Review:  The consultants who conducted the survey of taxpayers from throughout the city, including the Downtown area, found that the number one concern of Niagara Falls taxpayers was the roads.  And the service item on which the taxpayers were least satisfied with the present condition, was – the roads.

When asked to name “The One Issue that Requires the Greatest Attention,” respondents overwhelmingly identified our infrastructure.  “Improving the Downtown” was among the lowest-ranked items.  Accountability demands that this direction, given to Council by a representative sample of all of the citizens of Niagara Falls, be followed.   

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