I’m going to come right out and say that I know not much when it comes to a proposed housing development near the current Dragonfly Golf Links, but that said, I’m not going to let that stop me from discussing the proposal.
Jurisdictional boundary lines between municipalities are incredibly important in that they often divide two municipalities with completely different rules and different facts on the ground. I believe that’s something that can be said with respect to the Renfrew/Admaston-Bromley line. Plainly said, the property tax burden on one side of that line is far heavier than it is on the other, and that alone is a major reason for developers to feel skittish about building homes in Renfrew, a community where I believe nine new homes were built over the past four years, not exactly a scintillating rate of construction to be sure.
But there is a developer ready, willing, and able to build 400 homes on land not far from the boundary line, within the boundaries of Admaston-Bromley. These homes, if they’re ever built, will be paying their property taxes in Admaston-Bromley Township because of it. So there is no benefit accruing to the Town of Renfrew based upon anything I’ve just said.
I should say here that the people behind this proposal don’t necessarily consider themselves to be developers at all. Instead, they stress that they are local business people with a proven record of development. But they are no outsiders.
Renfrew’s local economy would get a positive bump, though, and there are estimates that four hundred households on the other side of the fence may well represent half a million dollars worth of business for Renfrew businesses. A month.
That would be somewhere in the area of $6 million a year pumped into the local economy, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. So at the very least there’s that, a circumstantial benefit I suppose. But what it doesn’t do is help Renfrew with one dime towards its ballooning debt, something that exploded exponentially as a result of the Ma-Te-Way affair.
But there’s something else.
The land out there, if my information its correct, isn’t exactly blessed with an abundance of water resources. Identification and the digging of wells many people just take for granted as something easily done. With an overwhelmingly rural character in most of Renfrew County, homes drawing on wells is an everyday thing for many of us. But there can be no simple assumption that there is water everywhere, that’s it’s plentiful, and that it’s suitable for human use in terms of its quality.
So here’s the kicker.
The developer has made a pitch to the Town of Renfrew to provide water and sewage service to the proposed development. In other words, a type of shared services agreement. Water is the priority, as there are options available for sewage, systems currently in use in similar developments in Eastern Ontario. But if they can reach an agreement with Renfrew on sewage as well, then that might be the preferred option.
The developers say they’re prepared to pay the entire cost of any infrastructure needed to get Renfrew’s water out to the area around Dragonfly. In addition, they’ve also indicated that they’re prepared to do any roadwork that might become necessary and absorb the cost of that. So, looking at that, it appears that if Renfrew were to shoot some water out that way, the town would not be on the hook for any cash at all. So, that’s one way to look at it, leveraging our town water supply to bring in an additional $6 million a year in local consumer spending.
In addition, it’s proposed by some in town that this water will be sold at a premium price, one higher, perhaps double, that charged to Renfrew residents themselves. Admittedly I have neither the numbers nor the smarts to give you a sense of how much money four hundred homes might generate in buying our water, and I’m certainly not suggesting that whatever amount this represents isn’t the panacea for Renfrew’s debt problem, not even close. But it is positive income, and even though it may drip into the town treasury, at least it’s going in and not coming out. And it will be dripping in for years, likely years and years.
As a former Renfrew homeowner and taxpayer, I believe my water bills were, like maybe $240/bi-monthly. Using that number, I was likely paying in the area of $1,440/year on water and sewage. Four hundred homes paying a similar charge would represent $576,000 in money coming the town’s way for service delivery. But if those four hundred homes are the ones in the proposed development, and each is paying double what I once paid, then that’s something that comes out to $1,152,000 coming our way. Every year.
It may not seem like a huge amount, but to tell the truth, I think I’d rather have $1.152 million than be looking for it, or even worse, owing it.
The idea is not without its critics.
At the All-Candidates Meeting recently, the question was brought up from the floor, and it seemed that most of the candidates did not favour the extension of services to this proposed housing development, The largest pushback issue was that, in the opinion of many, the water its ours, and if you want it, then build your homes in Renfrew.
Fair enough I guess, and simply put, but then again, as I’ve already indicated, developers don’t want to build in Renfrew because of the scariness of our property tax situation. So that’s just not going to happen, at least not yet, and maybe not in the foreseeable future.
There were others worried about capacity, as in they stated a fear of what might happen if we, as in Renfrew, were to reach our own water capacity and need a huge upgrade to boost capacity, something measuring in the many millions, the kind of cash the town simply doesn’t have on its own and might have difficulty borrowing.
Like what do we do if we hook all these folks up with water and then run out of the stuff due to capacity limitations? This is a prudent observation I suppose, but I don’t believe we’re anywhere near our capacity water-wise. In fact, if I heard correctly, one candidate who has credibility with me offered that we were below 50% of our usage capacity right now. Put another way, the entire town, and every home and business and spigot out there, uses an amount of water that takes up less than half of our current capacity. In fact, to get near that capacity limit, Renfrew would have to be humming along at a population of perhaps 17,000 people, a number that’s going to be a ways off for a town that has not grown, in the words of Councillor Cybulski, for over fifty years. So getting to the point where we reach a population of that size is a ways off, even if talk of four-laning of Highway 17 picks up steam.
Councillor Andrew Dick, a supporter of the proposed project, claims that for Renfrew to reach its water limit, the town would have to build a serious number of homes, perhaps as many as a hundred every year until the year 2057, in order to get to that limit. If only nine new homes were built in Renfrew over the past four years, and that rate continues, It seems as if going to take a hell of a long time to run out of water.
Other candidates spoke of shared services with other municipalities. Mayoral candidate Peter Emon spoke of what may be a redundancy of services involving townships and Renfrew with respect to some of the services that each provides to its residents. Emon says that there may be costly duplication of services, especially with communities that are literally reachable within a ten-minute care ride.
But this proposed housing development’s water needs, while also a “shared” service, isn’t exactly the same because the commodity shared isn’t the same.
Does anyone remember Butson’s, the hotel/motel/restaurant located across from the current ProTyre location? In it’s heyday, Butsons was a going concern with a busy parking lot. I think at one time, before my arrival, there was actually a strip joint out there as well, so I suppose that helped fill the lot with pickup trucks. But there’s a reason why I bring this up.
If I’m not mistaken — and I may well be — Butson’s its located in, wait for it, Horton Township! It’s actually not part of Renfrew at all. And I believe, perhaps as early as way back in the 1970’s, Butsons made a deal with the Town of Renfrew for exactly the same thing this developer is after, that being water and attendant services. So in its heyday, that establishment was paying Renfrew for a hookup to Renfrew’s water.
Butsons, of course, is no more, but the structure is still there, only today it’s a series of apartments, perhaps owned by McGrimmon Holdings. And I’ll bet they’re still getting their water from us as part of a shared service agreement.
The developer intends to construct homes in different tiers, building a few estate-style homes yes, but mostly building what Councillor Dick refers to as “attainable” housing, the kind of thing that people can actually afford to get into. It’s important to note that there are actually relatively new homes sitting empty in Renfrew right now because they’re not attainable given the high prices of the market and the onerous tax bill on top of that. So in theory, having a couple of hundred attainable homes built right on our doorstep can’t be a bad thing, can it? Especially homes with a much reduced tax burden than a similar place in Renfrew? At least we’d be mining those consumer dollars. Four hundred households can represent somewhere in the area of 1600 people walking around town with money in their pockets. That’s 1600 people with family and friends visiting from out of town, also with cash to spend. And if a successful proposition, the development could very well serve as an attractive model for other developers to attempt the same thing, and if close by, that wouldn’t hurt terribly either.
Renfrew is in a tough place, nobody disagrees with that. But as the years go by, and more debt gets paid off, our tax situation may begin to lean back in the town’s favour once again. Perhaps at some point, Renfrew will once again be an attractive place to sink development dollars into, and homes can then be built on a greater scale within the town’s limits.
In the interim, we still need to find ways to grow, or as the motto stresses, flourish.
I know a significant development just on the other side of the border isn’t ideal for Renfrew decision-makers, preferring of course that homes be built here. But in the absence of that at the moment, maybe having 1600 newcomers on our doorstep isn’t entirely a bad thing.
Below is YouTube video from the October 1st council meeting in Admaston-Bromley township. The fist 45 minutes of this video involves a presentation made to that council regarding the proposed housing development.
