General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

Are you suggesting that this money isn't being spent to expand parks area, number, or facilities? That's possible, but I would assume there are some guardrails on it.

Just to be clear, I don't expect these parks will be for the exclusive use of new residents, but new parks increase the park space available to ensure that the addition of new residents doesn't overwhelm the existing park space.

To be honest, I don't think development fees have ever gone to the benefit of those paying it over the past several decades. I do remember when before the kids were born we had huge development fees for a new townhouse for future builds of "community centres, arenas, pools" etc. My kids are now 22 and 20 and that area still has nothing, much like it did 40 years ago when that community first started.

We built 4 indoor pools between 1964 and 1990. We have built zero since then. We have 1 real outdoor pool (Harry Class) which has been around for almost 100 years.

We (as in the city) built 5 single pads (at least), The Aud (and the annex), and the twin pads behind The Aud (replaced the Annex), between 1951 and 1986 (35 years). We have built 1 twin pad since (Activa) which replaced at least 2 (Queensmount and Kingsdale) there were shuttered. We did take over Sportsworld, which was a private business. That place really serves Cambridge more than Kitchener, though.

In 30 years, we have added only 1 fire station.

We've done a little better with community centres, but again, most were built before 1990. But in many cases, we've shared responsibility with the school boards or converted other buildings (like Kingsdale).

As for literal parks, most of the money has been spent on existing parks that are well established.

So while I don't expect those fees to be used immediately (since there wouldn't be enough funds), quite often they go to refurbishing older facilities, building facilities that don't benefit the tax payer (like the Kitchener Operations Facility).

I have no idea how much money they have collected over the past 40 years or so, but as I said, most of that money has not been spent on those area.

I mean, someone with more familiarity with municipal budgets can weigh in if they like, but I'd be quite surprised if this was the case. Development charges are legislated by the province, I would think they go into general coffers.

By the way "upgrading" existing facilities is an entirely valid spend for development charges. For example, utility spend often involves increasing force main size to support greater populations.

I also disagree that things like the "Kitchener Operations Facility" doesn't benefit "taxpayers" (and I hate that term by the way--at best, it rejects a civic minded framing for an entitlement framing, at worst it is designed to explicitly exclude non-property-owning people in the community, I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but residents is a much better term). The residents benefit from a well organized effectively managed government, which involves spending money on operations. Frankly, I think we don't spend enough on that type of thing.

As for parks Kitchener built McLennan park in Kitchener, and AFAIK are working on another multi-deca-million park. While I disagree with the policy of focusing most of our funding on a few enormous parks, I do think that the money is clearly being spent on new facilities.