Adrian Bell, Yellowknife City Councillor

New Website Coming on September 5th

Over the last six years, this blog has been an excellent tool for reaching out to those Yellowknifers who are eager for a bit more detail on City Council issues than is typically found in the newspaper or on Facebook.  I know that sometimes I drone on in my posts, and it always amazes me to find out that people have stuck through to the end.  I would like to sincerely thank all of you who have been following along, whether just for the last few posts or since this started out as a "pro-Yellowknife" blog back in 2010, prior to my first term on Council.

But all things must come to an end.  With my mayoral campaign about to get underway, I need a more modern tool to spread the word, so as of September 5th I will cease to post on this blog and will begin posting at adrianbell.ca.  If my website helpers are successful in exporting all my old posts to the new site then I'll shut this down completely, but if not I'll leave it up so that aspiring City Councillors can use it as a source of information.

As a final note, if you are reading this post and if you have been following this blog, that probably means you care a lot about our community.  Not everyone has time in their lives to run for Council, but there are many other ways to be engaged and to contribute to making our city a great place to live.  During my campaign I'm hoping to bring together as many such people as possible, and to come out the other end with dozens of energized Yellowknifers who are ready to step up and get involved in different ways.  If that sounds like something you could get excited about, please sign up through my campaign website's landing page.  I look forward to working with you on our common objective of helping Yellowknife achieve its full potential.

Thanks again for following along, and I hope to see you all starting September 5th at the new site - adrianbell.ca

Sincerely,

Adrian Bell

 

 

 

 

For Tourism to Thrive, Arts and Culture Sector Must Be Supported

The Winning Entry at the Long John Jamboree's Ice Carving Competition in 2015

I began knocking on doors as a part of my mayoral campaign this past Saturday, and two things quickly became apparent.  First, people are pretty much all aware that over the next decade our economy will enter into a transition period related to the decline of the diamond mining sector.  But secondly, they also share my bewilderment and optimism at growth in the tourism sector.  When you walk around Old Town, or near Somba Ke Park in the afternoons and evenings these days, it feels like we are living in a completely different city than we were five years ago.  This gives people a lot of hope.  And with each passing year the difference is noticeable. Tourism is thriving.  It's amazing.

But as great as this growth is, people are also worried that we are not doing enough - that in a globally competitive industry, our offering to tourists is not adequate and that at some point this is going to come back to haunt us.  I agree with this view, but I think we have a window of opportunity to do something about it.

One of the things I've been talking about a lot with folks is the fact that all of our town's residents and businesses need the tourism sector to thrive if we are going to rise above the economic challenges ahead, but in order for tourism to thrive there is one group of residents and businesses that will have to do most of the heavy lifting - the arts and culture sector.  Tourists want more content - they want authentic Yellowknife and Northwest Territories experiences - and we need to turn to our arts and culture entrepreneurs and organizations to provide those experiences.

The next Mayor of Yellowknife will play a key role in working with our neighbours in Ndilǫ, Dettah and Behchokǫ̀, as well as arts organizations and individual entrepreneurs across the NWT and bringing them all together with sources of funding - both private and public - to create new arts and culture experiences, ranging from individual public art installations to festivals to bricks and mortar infrastructure.  

Besides these external opportunities, there are important internal ones as well - and the City's Grant Review Committee is central to those.  Last year I had the opportunity to join the Committee for the first time, and I was very excited to do so.  For years I was on the other side of the grant application process through my involvement with the Long John Jamboree, and it always seemed to me that the Committee didn't have a clear strategy besides equitably doling out as many cheques as possible to organizations that were capable of executing on their grant application proposals.  While this is all well and good for avoiding controversy (besides that which came from the capping of grants to NACC and the Yellowknife Seniors Society - a decision I fought to reverse), it doesn't allow the City to use it's grants to their full potential.  If we believe that tourism is critical to our city's future success - and the current Council holds this belief - then our allocation of grants should reflect this.

In order to line up grants with priorities, it helps to first start measuring how we are allocating grants - which sectors and types of organizations are receiving what percentage of total funding.  This is something I urged the committee to begin doing earlier this year and on Tuesday we spoke about formalizing this task even further, through annual reporting to Council.  The next step of course is to ask Council to provide guidance on which sectors should receive increases as the total pot, over time, grows in proportion with the growth of our tax base.

But this past Tuesday the Committee took what I think is a big step forward.  First, we agreed on a recommendation to Council that it establish a new multi-year grant for festivals, capped at three years and $20,000 per year, and we have included salaries as an eligible expenditure.  I've personally witnessed just how difficult is it for an event to get its feet firmly planted without the ability to make a firm commitment to an event organizer.  And asking organizers to spend the first months of every cycle chasing donations so they can cover their own pay checks is a tough proposition.  Many funding organizations have a restriction on salaries, for reasons that can be valid in many cases, but in Yellowknife, a city that needs new arts and culture content, making this change is a smart move.  The City is in a position to give festivals the support they deserve and festivals, in turn, can give arts and culture organizations and entrepreneurs some of the support they need.

The second exciting proposal that came out of Tuesday's meeting was that the City should host a workshop in November to train people to write grant proposals.  This is just one of the many ideas that was discussed for what the Committee might do in the future to urge the City to take on a new role as a capacity builder.  Executive directors of organizations across all sectors, but in particular event coordinators, need more local opportunities for training.  If we can build expertise and experience amongst the small group of hard working people in our community who take on the task of organizing festivals and events - and pay them properly - the return on these investments in terms of content creation will be huge.

The third thing that came out of Tuesday's meeting, which is unrelated to tourism so I won't go into too much detail, was that the Committee supported my recommendation that we create a new grant category - Small Neighbourhood Grants of between $50 and $500 for activities that bring neighbours together, allowing them to share skills or just to gather and get to know one another.  This new grant category is based on similar programs in other cities, and I've seen the impact they can have on building community spirit.

I'm extremely excited about the direction the Grant Review Committee appears to be taking.  This is one of those tools in the City's toolkit that has long gone under-utilized, and I look forward to seeing the results that come from these recent changes.

As it happens, there is currently a vacancy on the Committee, so if you've read this blog post in its entirely, that probably means you should apply.  If you want further background about the Committee and its work, please don't hesitate to get in touch. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yellowknife's Economic Diversification Must Include a Commitment to Innovation

Yellowknife in 2018 is more connected to the rest of the world that it has ever been - by the obvious digital means but also thanks the Deh Cho bridge over the Mackenzie River and an increasing number of direct flights out of our airport.  And yet, because we’re pretty far from the nearest city, we don’t often take a close look at our neighbours and compare and contrast our activities, communities and economies with theirs.  This is understandable, given that our neighbours are so far away from us, and in most cases, much larger, but comparing and contrasting is something that we must do more of.  There are strategies being employed by our neighbours that we must now borrow if we are going to be ready for the challenges that will come from declining activity in the diamond mining sector.

When we do make comparisons with our neighbours, we usually talk about Whitehorse.  Our two cities are of similar size, we are both territorial capitals, we have similar climates, and as far as many southern Canadians are concerned, we are interchangeable.  Both our cities have their relative strengths and weaknesses, and as much as I love to talk about the reasons why we are the greater city, there is value in taking a close look at the things Whitehorse is doing better than Yellowknife.  Yesterday while knocking on doors on Borden Drive I told one resident who was concerned about the future of our economy, that if all the next Council were to do is borrow and implement ideas from Whitehorse for four years, I would consider that a great success.  And I was only half joking.

Comparisons to Whitehorse often centre on tourism, festivals, post-secondary education, and arts and culture infrastructure.  These are valuable comparisons to make of course and there is a lot we must to in these areas, but the area that I think we need to look more closely at is innovation, and innovation centres. For your consideration, here is the very first line on the “About” page of the website of Whitehorse non-profit, YuKonstruct:

“We are the first Canadian makerspace north of 60”

 And here is their explanation of the term “makerspace:”

 “Simply put, it’s a community workshop.

A makerspace is a community-operated workspace incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops, and / or studios where ‘makers’ come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things happen.  These Makerspaces evolved because would-be entrepreneurs and hobbyists were missing the space, tools, or expertise they needed to get their ideas off the ground. Interests generally include computers, technology, science, art, and other tactile endeavours, (like wood and metal work). There are 30+ makerspaces in Canada and 900+ around the world. We are the first Canadian makerspace north of 60.”

YuKonstruct began with their makerspace in 2014 and then only a year later opened a coworking space in downtown Whitehorse.  As you can tell by the statistics in the excerpt above, Whitehorse did not invent the idea of creating innovation centres, they observed the benefits such centres were providing to 900+ other cities around the word, and they borrowed and implemented those pre-existing concepts. We must now do the same.

The benefits of innovation centres are pretty obvious to anyone who has ever opened or dreamed of opening a small business.  Simply put, they make it easier for entrepreneurs to get their concepts off the ground.  And the reason this is so important for Yellowknife right now is that we are in serious need of economic diversification – and entrepreneurs are the agents of economic diversification; they try new things, explore new technologies, investigate new markets. They, not the City of Yellowknife, are the ones who will discover whether our City can be a centre for craftmaking, birch syrup manufacturing, energy-efficient construction, mobile app development or some other cool new thing that I’m not hip enough to know about yet.

And innovation centres don’t just help cities diversify their economies one time, as we must do in the coming decade, they are engines of continual diversification.

Fortunately we neither have to re-invent the wheel, nor are we starting from scratch.  Two local groups that I’m aware of have been experimenting with these concepts.  Good Company Co-Working and Innovation Centre opened in downtown Yellowknife in 2016, and just a couple of weeks ago a company called Music Exchange won a year’s free rent and other support to open what will effectively be an arts innovation centre in the heart of downtown Yellowknife.  These enterprises will need assistance if they are to achieve their objectives. The City of Yellowknife has a central role to play in making sure they succeed.

And at the City of Yellowknife, helping these groups and other innovation centres has to start with re-allocating resources to get serious about economic development.  Right now, the City’s economic development function is carried out by two hardworking individuals who split their time between economic development and communications, and they work within a department whose main focus is policy and legal services.  This is not a model for success, and if elected Mayor on October 15^{th it} is something I would endeavour to change within the first 100 days of the new term.

It’s time we got serious about economic development and diversification, and that can’t be done properly without a commitment to innovation.

 

To read more about my platform, you can find it here: https://www.adrianbell.ca

Additional information on innovation centres:

http://www.innovationalley.com/about/

TEC Edmonton

https://www.edmonton.ca/business_economy/industrial_development/research-innovation.aspx

http://www.launchalaska.com

https://www.startupcalgary.ca

 

The Coming Rental Housing Crunch

At a time when Yellowknifers are becoming increasingly concerned about the long-term economic challenges associated with the coming closures of the Ekati and Diavik Diamond Mines, it might seem a bit odd to be raising a red flag about a possible spike in rental rates and insufficient availability of rental units.  Nonetheless, this is a conversation that needs to take place.  I think it is likely that starting in 2020 we’ll experience a bump in rents that will cause a lot of our residents a lot of grief.  If anything can be done to solve this problem, now is the time to act.

Downtown Ambassadors - A Missing Piece in Our Downtown Revitalization Puzzle

Edmonton's downtown ambassadors (Edmonton Sun)

I'm on my way to City Hall in a few minutes to lay out the basic concept for a "Downtown Ambassador" program to our Senior Administrative Officer and Director of Corporate Affairs, who will then flesh it out a bit further and bring it forward to Council for consideration in the 2019 budget.  I'm going to propose that the program be paid for out of the Downtown Development Reserve - a reserve fund that receives 25% of downtown parking revenue each year.

Given that Budget 2019 will be deliberated and adopted by a brand new Council, it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to post some background information here so that new councillors can warm up to the idea.  Here are a few excerpts from descriptions of similar programs in other cities:

We Might Be Getting Better at Spring Cleanup

There is no denying that Yellowknife has an ugly season - a muddy, dusty garbage-y season between snow melt and spring growth. But yesterday's downtown cleanup session left me with the impression that over the past eleven years residents, volunteer groups and the City of Yellowknife have gotten much better at getting winter litter off the streets quickly. Allison and I had to walk blocks further than we have in past years to find "problem spots" and in fact we never really did find them.

The Yellowknife Business Community's Mill Rate Problem

At today’s Municipal Services Committee meeting, Council will be setting mill rates for 2018 in our six property tax categories.   Mill rates are not well understood by many residents.  A mill rate is a number by which assessment values are multiplied to arrive at your annual property tax bill.  That might seem simple, but it gets more confusing during years when we have a general assessment – in which case taxes can go up even if mill rates go down.  But more important than the rates themselves is the ratio of rates across the six different categories – and particularly between the Commercial and Residential tax categories. 

Seeking Your Support for Mayor of Yellowknife in 2018

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be putting my name forward for Mayor of the City of Yellowknife in the fall of 2018. It has been a great pleasure to serve on City Council since 2012 and as Deputy Mayor since 2016. I’m proud of the things we, together with many dedicated staff at City Hall, have accomplished in my two terms on Council. That said, as residents have made clear to me, there is much room for improvement. Furthermore, there are economic challenges looming on the horizon unlike any we’ve seen in the last two decades. To meet these looming challenges and to achieve a better, brighter future for all residents, Yellowknife will need a mayor with a strong vision, unending determination, and a proficiency for working with other members of Council. These are qualities and approaches I bring to my work as a City Councillor. Equally imperative for the next Mayor is a willingness to look at, and improve, the inner workings of City Hall - a responsibility I have taken very seriously.

I look forward to sharing my vision for the City of Yellowknife with residents in the coming months, focussing on three main objectives:

1. Reducing the cost of living and of doing business in Yellowknife

2. Strengthening and diversifying our economy

3. Establishing a culture of accountability and transparency at City Hall

With the support of residents, I believe I can work with Council to set Yellowknife on a path to economic resiliency and prosperity, and improve the quality of life for all Yellowknifers.

Sincerely,

Adrian Bell
adrianbellyk@gmail.com

Conference Board's "Grim" Economic Forecast

The Conference Board of Canada's latest economic forecast for the NWT - as highlighted in this CBC article - is certainly a wakeup call if there ever was one. Most Yellowknife residents know the diamond mines will be winding down over the next couple of decades, but the Conference Board's predictions will still shock many people. The fact is, we've been very fortunate to have such huge diamond mines operating in the NWT. Our economy is about to enter a significant transition period. We need to get out ahead of this or we will find ourselves at the mercy of a receding tide.

Economic Diversification Should Not Be This Hard

This CBC North article provides a great example of savvy economic development by the Yukon Government and inspired collaboration with the Whitehorse private sector. The GY has invested millions to diversify its economy to cushion the blow during the next commodities slump, meanwhile the City of Yellowknife has spent years begging the GNWT for permission to charge a simple hotel levy to begin investing in the tourism sector. It shouldn't be this difficult.

Over the Christmas holidays while driving back from Edmonton I couldn't help but groan upon reviewing our hotel bill after a night's stay in High Level. My groan was kind of like the sound Sideshow Bob makes when he steps on yet another rake. We were charged a tourism levy of 7% for a hotel stay that was absolutely unavoidable, unless we wanted to sleep in our vehicle at -39 degrees Celsius. My groan was not from resentment at having to pay the levy - I recognize the brilliance of this type of modest but impactful consumption tax - I groaned because the City of Yellowknife cannot charge a similar levy, even at 1%.

Our festivals barely survive on their shoestring budgets and depend on the quite frankly incomprehensible commitment of a handful of volunteers and underpaid organizers. Our Visitor's Centre is located in a windowless board room at City Hall. For all intents and purposes we do not have a downtown retail experience for our tourists to enjoy. And yet all the while we live in one of the most beautiful settings in the country, with lakes all around and some of the best aurora in the world dancing over our heads.

Yellowknife has a ton of potential, but we are riding the pine. It's time for territorial cabinet to put us in the game.

MED Official Inquiry Update

I've been fielding lots of questions from the public and the press over the last week regarding the Official Inquiry into allegations of workplace misconduct within the City of Yellowknife's Municipal Enforcement Division. Folks are looking for updates and I'm happy to say that we now have a better way to provide those updates. I brought forward a motion last week to establish a webpage for this purpose, Council passed the motion, and City Administration got it up and running in record time (you can find it here). It's very simple and there isn't a whole lot on it just yet, but this is where you'll find updates as we reach decisions and move forward with the Inquiry process. Once we have a contractor selected we should shortly thereafter have a formal timeline to share with you.

There continues to be some confusion in the community regarding the necessity of some of Council's discussions on this matter happening behind closed doors.

Is Slate Asset Management Aware of the State of Yellowknife's Centre Square Mall?

Well, another long-time tenant is closing in Yellowknife's Centre Square Mall. @SlateAssetMgmt, are you aware of the state of your Yellowknife asset? It's a small speck on your portfolio, but for those of us who care about Yellowknife's downtown, it's a major problem.

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

@SlateAssetMgmt, are you aware that by barricading your 50th street entrance a decade ago you cut foot traffic in half and likely doomed retailers near that entrance to fail? pic.twitter.com/wGj7paIdFr

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

@SlateAssetMgmt, just like you, I'm pretty sure the co-owner of your mall, Holloway Lodgings, is unaware of these things. I was a tenant at the NE end of the mall for 13 years. I watched as tenants played your predecessors off against each other in a race to the bottom on rents

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

, just like you, Holloway's predecessor erected a barrier at a key entrance to prevent non-hotel guests from using the hotel entrance to access the mall. Their decision turned my excellent location into a complete dud.

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

, the Centre Square Mall can be turned around. You and Holloway need to put your heads together, consolidate healthy tenants at one end, re-purpose the other end. The City of Yellowknife, would likely be an eager partner in discussions.

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

there are positive signs nearby that you need to be made aware of. The Federal, territorial and municipal governments are pouring money into addressing homelessness. And 49th street now has the highest density of office workers and condos in Yellowknife.

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

, many of those office workers and residents would love to walk through your mall to access the very popular new Fat Fox cafe but cannot because you barricaded your 50th street entrance, and Holloway has only a delivery entrance on that side of the mall.

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

, just to be clear, I'm saying that between you and Holloway, you have 687ft of downtown frontage with no customer access to your mall, and no customer parking. I'm not saying it's the Berlin Wall, but it's not great for our downtown. pic.twitter.com/rw2hjlLH4p

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

, would you be willing to send directors to Yellowknife to see for themselves? I will extend the same invitation to Holloway Lodgings, and as Deputy Mayor I can assure you that the City will come to the table. I implore you, please accept my invitation.

— Adrian Bell (@adriandbell) January 9, 2018

The Problem with City Budgeting

Here are today's charts. The first one, as the title suggests, highlights the single biggest problem with City of Yellowknife budgeting (even bigger than yesterday's problem which I also claimed was the biggest - that's how big a problem it is), and it impacts our cost of living significantly so I really hope I get a lot of questions about this - especially from anyone thinking of running for Council in 2018.

Wages & Benefits vs. Population

The chart below highlights the biggest challenge that Yellowknife city councillors face during budget week, which starts tomorrow. The big question we should all feel compelled to answer is, how has the City's Wages & Benefits budget increased by 47% since 2009 when our population has only grown by 8% and inflation has only been about 16%?

On the chart below, the horizontal axis is years, with 1 representing 2009 (I'm not great at charts). 2017 and 2018 are projections based on the draft budget, and the annual average population growth from 2009 to 2016 (.88%) according to the NWT Bureau of Statistics.

And here are the numbers I based the chart on:

Little Known City Budget Facts

Little-known Fact #1: Cutting Capital Projects Will Have a Limited Effect on our Proposed Property Tax Increase This Year

The City is proposing to collect $28.7 million in taxes in 2018, but of that amount, only $500,000 will be transferred to the Capital Fund for capital projects, with the rest staying in the General Fund to pay for departmental operational budgets. I believe Council will very quickly find $500,000 in projects to cut, which will take care of 1.74% of the proposed 5.64% increase. Project cuts beyond that will help rebuild the Capital Fund balance but will not reduce the tax increase. To reduce the tax increase, we must make cuts on the operational side.

City Council's New Vision for Downtown Yellowknife

It was an honour and a privilege to be acting as chairperson yesterday when City Council tabled its comprehensive vision for downtown revitalization. I know this seems like a basic exercise, but for a variety of reasons we haven't had a tool like this since 2002. I believe this will put an end to the myopic single-project-based approaches to revitalization that we've seen since the Downtown Plan was abandoned in the mid 2000s. Our downtown is more than just the 50/50 lot, and we need a bold, multi-faceted plan if we're going to put an end to the stagnation that has taken hold of our downtown since the 1990s.

Yellowknife City Council's Parking Problem

This has been an interesting week.  On Monday I touched base with one of our downtown food vendors and we exchanged notes on positive developments both in his industry and in our downtown in general, as well as lingering challenges.  On Tuesday I went to the Farmer’s Market for the first time in a few weeks and, as is often the case, I spent much of my time marvelling at the unbelievable success of the event.  On Wednesday we had a City Council meeting following which I received an update from the Mayor on what appears to have been a very successful first week of operations for the new Street Outreach Services program and the Sobering Centre.  On Thursday evening I drove through our downtown and noticed only a couple of people behaving in a way that made me hope there were no conference attendees or children in the immediate vicinity – far less of this type of activity than I’m used to seeing on a typical weeknight during the summer.

At some point on Friday I found myself thinking about “what ifs.” Many people, myself included, believe that one of the problems we must deal with early on in our revitalization process is the prevalence of public intoxication and associated anti-social behaviour in our downtown.  But what if the City and GNWT were to find a way to curb this particular problem by expanding addictions treatment options and housing the homeless? If the downtown were to become a place where all residents feel safe at all times of day and night would new retail businesses open up?  Would the shoppers start coming out of the woodwork?  Would families start planning trips to our downtown core?  I'm concerned that they might not.

I know this line of thinking may seem like a bit of meaningless navel gazing, but I actually think it’s very important to consider these types of questions.  We know that bringing life to our downtown is a complex and “multi-faceted” challenge, but it would be foolish of us to focus on just a select group of those facets while ignoring others completely.  Especially if the facets we are focussing on are not actually the causes of our downtown stagnation, but rather its symptoms.  What if we fix the problem only to find out that it wasn't actually the problem?

This brings me to an issue that at first glance seems mundane - parking.  If you bear with me, I'll try to make the point that parking is more important than we've given it credit for.  I think City Hall and City Council have a parking problem and it has been thwarting our downtown revitalization efforts for years.  And by this I don’t mean we have a shortage of parking spots close to City Hall, I mean we have a problem with how we think about parking. 

If you want proof that we have a “parking philosophy” problem, go take a look at the front of the Fat Fox Café.  The Fat Fox has been open for more than a year and I think we can all agree that it is exactly the kind of business we want to see more of in our downtown, yet somehow, we at City Council and City Hall have not considered whether our parking policies in front of the Fat Fox are helping or hurting this valued business.  Rather than installing short-term parking meters, we've allocated this valuable space to a huge loading zone (the Gold Range has a perfectly good back alley) and a 24-hr cab stand so that bar patrons don’t have to walk a half block to find cabs at two in the morning. What message does this send to other potential retailers?  I think it demonstrates that City Hall is not looking at parking through an economic development or retail revitalization lens. That, to my mind, is a problem.

Over the last four years, when the issue of parking has come up during Council meetings, City Administration and some Councillors have expressed the view that downtown Yellowknife does not have a parking problem.  They point to a study conducted several years back that proved that even during peak hours there is an acceptable number of vacant on-street parking spaces in our downtown.  I’ve argued that while this may be true of the downtown as a whole, it doesn't accurately reflect realities on a block-by-block basis.  You simply cannot point to empty parking spots on 53^rd street and argue that they are useful to customers who would like to pop in to Shoppers Drug Mart five blocks away.  I know that our city planners know this, but I think there are a couple of reasons why they are reluctant to revisit their position on parking. 

One reason is that responsibility for parking doesn't currently fall to our city planners, it falls  to the Department of Public Safety.  While that might make sense for parking bylaw enforcement and revenue collection, it doesn't make as much sense for decisions about who should park where, and why.  These decisions should be made by the Department of Planning and Development or the Economic Development Division. 

The other reason is a little trickier to discuss.  I think we’ve been incredibly lucky to recruit excellent city planners over the years, but I also believe that city planners across North America are taught that automobiles are city destroyers and that parking is the enemy of the modern downtown (in many ways I agree with this view, but only up to a point.)  Because of this view, they strongly favour a particular method of downtown revitalization.  To explain why I think that's a problem I have to talk a bit about the limited downtown revitalization methods that are available to us.  As far as I can tell there are only really two of them.  

The first method is to build up the residential density of our downtown and improve public transit so that we can support new retail without drawing more vehicles to the downtown.  This method - "Downtown Densification" - requires no additional parking but decades of patience as we wait for the downtown residential population to grow.  It also requires millions of dollars of investment from the private sector and taxpayers.  Downtown Densification is the method that is strongly favoured by every city planner I've ever met, in Yellowknife and elsewhere. 

The second method - let's call it "Destination Downtown" - is to make downtown a shopping and entertainment destination for the 90% of Yellowknifers who live outside of the downtown.  Any way you slice it, Destination Downtown requires us to provide additional parking.  

There is no doubt in my mind that although Downtown Densification is a more environmentally friendly method and would result in a better looking downtown (fewer parking spaces), Destination Downtown would yield quicker results.  You only have to look at other cities our size to be persuaded of this.

Two cities I often point to in these situations are Courtenay, B.C. and Whitehorse, YT.  They have what I believe most of us here in Yellowknife want – consolidated retail areas with vibrant, attractive streetfronts and an interesting variety of thriving businesses.  It doesn't take much exploration (via Google Streetview) to figure out that Courtenay and Whitehorse didn't get to where they are today by pursuing a Downtown Densification model, they pursued a Destination Downtown model.  Here are two screenshots of their retail main streets:

 

…and here are two screenshots of the streets behind them:

 

The idyllic retail main streets above are only made possible by the ample parking immediately behind them (and, if road width allows, angle parking in front of them).  

Thanks to the density of daytime office workers in our downtown, if the City of Yellowknife were to shift a bit more towards the Destination Downtown end of the spectrum, we could do so without turning our downtown into a giant parking lot.  But there is no getting around the fact that we would need a greater number of more conveniently located parking stalls.  And it probably wouldn't hurt if we stopped charging people for the privilege of parking in them.

 [Author's note:  I've made a couple of major edits to this post since I first wrote it, just to clarify a few key points.  I apologize for any confusion this has caused]

2017 Citizen Survey and Downtown RCMP/MED Activities

Tomorrow's Municipal Services Committee agenda is very important from both a downtown revitalization perspective and a more general quality-of-life-in-Yellowknife perspective. First off, we'll be receiving monthly reports from the RCMP and our own Municipal Enforcement Division. Following that we'll be reviewing the 2017 Citizen Survey. The survey does not paint a good picture of residents' perceptions of the downtown. While anecdotally I know this to be the case, that doesn't make it any easier to see the cold hard facts reported in a survey summary, especially in a year when two projects I proposed for the downtown ($300,000 for Community Safety Officers and $50,000 for a short-term employment project) have crashed and burned. The survey is a wake-up call. I will renew my efforts in this year's budget, and I believe I have a much better sense of where some the problems are, thanks mostly to this year's failures.

The attached screen capture from the MED monthly report is particularly interesting. The more detailed stats are contained on the following page, but basically in 2016 library staff had to call MED for assistance with security issues 418 times by the end of May. This year that number is down to 68. That's a shocking decline. Part of the reason for the decline is that MED officers now pro-actively patrol the library. They did so 34 times in the month of May (just over once per day). But the actual physical presence of officers is perhaps not as important as the knowledge that they might be present. Clearly, those people who used to make the library uncomfortable for other patrons have either changed their behaviour or are behaving poorly somewhere else.

It is important to point out that we're not talking about RCMP officers here. MED officers have very little power when it comes to stopping the type of behaviour Yellowknifers are so concerned about. They cannot detain intoxicated individuals nor confiscate open alcohol, but because the library is a City facility they can escort people off the premises. And in most cases I'm sure they don't have to even go that far. They are effective merely by being present and by letting people know certain behaviours are not welcome in the library.

The other interesting thing to note is that the Manager of MED is not crediting the pro-active patrols for the change on their own, he is also crediting the extended hours at the Day Shelter. I find this point incredibly important. We all know that homelessness is a huge issue in our city. Services and facilities must be made available to people who are vulnerable to homelessness or who are suffering from addictions. But, at the same time, if we want to make city facilities and our downtown in general welcoming to parents and their children, tourists, and everyone else, then we also have to make it clear that public intoxication is not acceptable in those same spaces. If the hours of operation had been extended at the Day Shelter but without an increase in enforcement activities at the library, the change would not have been as significant. The library would have continued to be viewed by some as a space that is just as suitable for public intoxication as the Day Shelter.

A final note: in the month of May, the RCMP patrolled the downtown 36 times. At some level, RCMP foot patrols can have the same effect in our broader downtown as the MED patrols in the library (which is why we keep begging for more of them), but that level is certainly not 36 times. You can't allocate the same resources to the entire downtown as to a single facility like the library and expect similar results. We simply need more RCMP foot patrols, and we won't get them until our colleagues at the Legislative Assembly wake up to the fact that while shelters and treatment services are incredibly important, if liquor laws aren't being enforced then the entire downtown is effectively one big sobering centre. The 2017 Citizen Survey tells us that's not what people want.

Lest I be accused of passing the buck to the GNWT, I would point out that the Community Safety Officer initiative was the exact opposite of buck passing. It was the City stepping up to the plate. And I'm not done trying on that one. I believe there is a way forward and that, if implemented, it would help ensure that the next time we conduct a citizen survey, reviews of the downtown won't be as scathing.

 

Visitor Information Services: Careful Analysis is Required

Clearly, Yellowknife has a problem with respect to the provision of visitor information services.  The Northern Frontier Visitors Centre is sinking into Frame Lake and the Association that runs the Centre had no choice but to abandon the building.  Further compounding the problem is the fact that this all happened very quickly – the Association didn’t have time to come up with a contingency plan.  That’s a pretty simple description of the problem, but I believe it is accurate. 

I haven’t weighed in on this issue before now for two reasons.  First, there are hard-working and well-meaning Northern Frontier Visitors Association volunteers and staff involved, and they deserve the opportunity to work through their issues without a bunch of politicians weighing in.  Secondly, staff at the City and GNWT’s department of Industry, Tourism and Investment are actively working to find solutions.  Until we see the results of their work, it is somewhat pointless to take a position.

But today’s editorial in the Yellowknifer (below) makes it clear to me that there is a perception of this situation, and of the necessary response, that is gaining traction in our community.  It’s not one that I agree with and, if possible, I’d like to prevent it from taking hold.  NNSL’s editorial board, and apparently a handful of our MLAs, appear to want money to be thrown at this problem.  Launching tax dollars through the air is being portrayed as an obvious and incontrovertible solution.  Perhaps it’s because I’m a small business owner, or perhaps because I’ve spent the last four years trying to ferret out wasteful spending at the City, but simply throwing money at a problem is not an approach that I’m comfortable with.  And I honestly don’t know how people have come to this conclusion.  Take the following statement for example:

“The irony of the NWT having both record-breaking tourism numbers and a capital city visitors association that feels it has no choice but to poach from the private sector to stay afloat appears lost on the city and territorial govern- ment.” - NNSL (see editorial below)

At first glance, it seems logical to suggest that record-breaking levels of tourism might drive up the costs of operating a visitors centre, and that the City and ITI should somehow tie their funding to tourist traffic.  This obviously makes sense to some degree, but it is a gross oversimplification to suggest that tourist volume is the only cost driver that needs to be taken into consideration here.  

I don’t have the details of the NFVA’s financials, nor do I know the history of how they came to own a very large building that is undoubtedly very expensive to operate and maintain, but as a City Councillor it would be irresponsible of me not to ask the following question: how much should it cost to offer visitor information services?  Does a visitors centre truly have “no choice” but to generate three quarters of a million dollars in revenue from services that are considered non-essential by its government funders in order to keep the lights on?

Maybe the answer to this is that yes, this is unavoidable.  Or maybe the answer is that it was unavoidable given the huge expense of operating and maintaining the Northern Frontier Visitor’s Centre.  I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I certainly intend to know them before making a decision about funding these services in the future.

As a result of the unfortunate and unexpected closure of the NFVC, the board members and staff of the NFVA along with City and GNWT staff have a rare opportunity to reconsider how Visitor Information Services are offered in the NWT’s capital.  Perhaps they will conclude that the previous model was perfect.  Or, perhaps they will conclude that there is a more cost-effective way to deliver these services.  Either way, I’m not about to pre-empt the careful analysis that must precede either of these conclusions.  Nor am I prepared to remain quiet when the press or MLAs suggest that taking the time to get this right somehow equates to a lack of support for the tourism sector.  Such a suggestion is either completely disingenuous or demonstrates a dangerously cavalier attitude towards the expenditure of public funds.

 

A Few Corrections to a CBC North Article on the Downtown

Yesterday, CBC North published an article on their website regarding vacant retail space in the downtown.  I'm glad they did so, because it's a conversation that isn't taking place often enough, but I did want to clarify a few of the points I was quoted on.  

1. I didn't say businesses want direct access to Franklin Avenue, I said they want direct access to street fronts in general. Obviously the busier the street the better, but Franklin is not the only desirable street front in the downtown core.

2. I wasn't really asked to comment on the City contest but the article makes it seem as though I think it's a futile endeavour. That's not the case at all. Rent is obviously a big obstacle to a new business and this contest is a creative way to help some lucky entrepreneur overcome that obstacle and establish themselves. Whether or not they will pay market rent at the end of the subsidy or move to a better location is anybody's guess.

3. I was not a tenant at the Centre Square Mall, I was a tenant in the Quality Inn Mall (formerly the YK Inn Mall). The two are attached, but they are separate entities.

4. When I spoke of retailers opting for rental space without common areas and the hassles that accompany common areas, I wasn't referring to the Centre Square/Quality Inn Mall in particular, I was referring to a North American trend that began in the 1990s. This is not at all unique to Yellowknife. Retailers want to know that when people walk though their front door, there is a very high likelihood that they are there to shop. And furthermore, if they are not there to shop, the retailer has some ability to control the situation by virtue of their lease. Tenants in malls have no control over what happens in common area space.

5. It seems a bit confusing that I said the answer to the problem is more residential density and then a sentence of later I say that we need modern retail space. The connection between the two, which I probably didn't make clear to the author, is that nobody is going to build new retail space unless there is a demand for it. The saying goes that "tabletops follow rooftops" - meaning restaurants and other "tabletop" businesses don't open up to try and create residential growth in a given area, they open up as a reaction to residential growth in a given area. A growing downtown population would provide the demand required to justify new retail development.

One other option to create more demand is to take vacant retail space off the market, as WAM did over a decade ago when they re-purposed the Panda II Mall from empty retail to health services and offices.

6. Our company name is Century 21 Prospect Realty, not Century 21 Greenway Realty.

A Heartfelt Thank You to the Volunteers Who Make this Weekend So Amazing

Tonight, after a very long day of work, the dozens of volunteers who organized the Long John Jamboree are going to flop down on their beds, exhausted beyond belief, and sleep the sleep of the dead for as many hours as possible. Tomorrow morning their alarms will go off and they will drag themselves out of bed do do it all one more time. I know the feeling. I also know what it's like before you fall asleep to question why you are involved in this event. Volunteers may wonder if anybody cares - if their contributions are valued. I'm here to tell all those volunteers that your efforts are deeply valued. 

For some people the Long John Jamboree, Snowking's Winter Festival and other such events are merely an opportunity to have some fun outdoors, celebrate the coming of spring, and re-connect with friends. But as a City Councillor and Yellowknife business owner, I see these festivals as transformative drivers of our local economy. Hundreds of visitors now time their visits to coincide with this weekend. Restaurants, pubs and hotels are packed. Social media comes alive with pictures of our city. 

But just because these events are now clearly a success in terms of impacting the local economy, that doesn't mean they are sustainable and successful as organizations. Boards experience high turnover, lessons have to be learned and then re-learned, and one year of difficulty can send the organization into a tailspin. It really shouldn't be that way and, in my opinion, the job of helping these events achieve sustainability falls to the City of Yellowknife.

One of this current City Council's five strategic objectives is to strengthen and diversify our economy. In my opinion, the only sectors of the economy that we can hope to impact are the downtown retail economy and tourism. And when it comes to tourism, nothing has a better return on taxpayer investment than support for festivals. Yes, the City contributes $10,000 a year to the Long John Jamboree, but it could and should do so much more. Other cities recognize the economic value of these events and have found innovative ways to support them, from providing training for event organizers, fundraisers and board members, to providing manpower, to directly organizing components of events.

Next month, City Council will be meeting to discuss options for achieving its strategic objectives. When it come to this topic, I will be pushing hard for a thorough analysis of possible means for supporting festivals. I know many other councillors feel the same way I do about these festivals, so I suspect we will come up with much needed programs and means of support.

So to all those of you who have worked your butts off putting this weekend together, please know that City Council values your contribution - and I am confident we will do more to help you in the future.

 

Yellowknife's Municipal Enforcement Division and the NWT Liquor Act

I’ve received a few questions about the motion I brought forward last night with respect to the City’s MED level 1 officers (those who monitor parking meters).  I suspect there are more questions to come today, so I’ll try to answer them here.  My motion directed our MED officers to begin reporting to Council on the number of referrals they make to the RCMP per month for criminal activity and violations of the NWT Liquor Act that they observe during the course of their work.  

The bottom line is that someone in this City needs to start enforcing NWT Liquor Act violations.  If nobody does, downtown business owners, shoppers, workers and tourists pay the price.  Perceptions of our city decline.  Our ability to retain and recruit residents declines.  Unfortunately, this is nothing new, but doing something about it has never been more important than it is right now.  Diamond mines and mining in general are on the decline, but our tourism industry, with a bit of nurturing, could cushion the blow to our economy and our quality of life.  Tourists, more than anyone, are sensitive to the current state of our downtown and, in this age of online reviews and internet-powered word of mouth, it will catch up with us sooner or later.

The price paid by our economy and our residents should be reason enough to act on this, but there is, unfortunately, a second reason we need to sort this out.  At City Hall, the most important tool in our downtown revitalization toolkit is to increase our downtown residential population, the theory being that this will bring more “eyes on the street.”  But these new “eyes” (should we ever manage to attract them) can’t increase safety merely by being present.  They have to actually report crime and violations of the NWT Liquor Act when they observe them.  That’s how they will make the downtown safer, not just by being there.  But what happens if they report these things and nobody responds?  I’ll tell you what happens, they sell their downtown homes, they leave, and they tell others to stay away.  So unless we ensure that someone is responding to these calls, we are throwing away the millions of dollars we have spent, and the millions more we will be spending in the coming years, trying to attract residents to our downtown.

But we have a solution readily available to us.  We have full-time Municipal Enforcement Division level 1 officers patrolling the downtown on foot, monitoring our parking meters and writing tickets.  These officers have been instructed to observe, record and report to the RCMP criminal activity when they see it.  But unfortunately, as I discovered only yesterday, they have been instructed not to report violations of the Liquor Act to the RCMP – with the explanation being that the RCMP will not respond to these calls.  In taking this approach, the City is only making matters worse.  A call from an MED officer to the RCMP that goes unanswered is an important data point.  We need to record all of these data points, gather them in a neat pile, and lay them squarely in the laps of Yellowknife MLAs, who should be embarrassed to no end that they are unable to enforce their own Liquor Act.

There is not a single City Councillor or MLA who believes that throwing intoxicated people in the drunk tank is an appropriate long-term response to addictions and mental illness.  But it’s also disingenuous to cast our downtown problem as only a problem of addictions and mental illness.  We have considerable and currently unaddressed safety issues to contend with as well.  And furthermore, the RCMP have many, many tools at their disposal besides incarceration that will move us in the right direction – especially now that we are about to have a Sobering Centre and Street Outreach Services added to the mix.  If the RCMP will not use these tools, then the GNWT needs to make the legislative and budgetary changes required to allow the City to hire Community Safety Officers, as soon as possible.

An Honest Assessment of Our Downtown Revitalization Efforts

The Christmas holiday break is a great time for reflection, partly because it falls at the end of the calendar year and partly because in Yellowknife, overeating and socializing aside, there isn't all that much to do.  It's very cold outside, businesses and the territorial government shut down, people head south, news websites are full of useless "year in review articles", my wife and I don't have kids, the Philadelphia Eagles weren't in contention for the playoffs - you get the picture.  

Over this year's break I spent a lot of time thinking about the City of Yellowknife's approach to downtown revitalization.  Now is a good time for this particular type of reflection because we've just hired a new Senior Administrative Officer and we are about to begin the search for a new director of Planning and Development.  Decisions made in the next three months will have a huge impact on the next decade or two of City planning.  In many ways, this will be the most important three-month stretch in a very long time.

When evaluating the City's track record on downtown revitalization we have to distinguish between things, good and bad, that the City has actually had a hand in versus those that have happened without the City's involvement.  For example, previous Councils deserve heaps of credit for investing in Somba K'e Park, but neither they nor the current Council should take credit for the recent proliferation of restaurants and hotel rooms in or near our downtown.  

Likewise, although the City has stepped up to the plate to assist the growing population of residents struggling with homelessness and addictions, I don't believe it is to blame for failing to find solutions quickly enough.  That unfortunate distinction belongs to higher levels of government.

Perhaps even more important than looking at what has happened in our downtown is looking at what hasn't happened  - and this has really been the focus of my thinking on this topic.  The Downtown Plan was adopted by Yellowknife City Council in 2002.  It, and every downtown revitalization document produced in Canada in the 15 years since, placed an emphasis on two key tools for effecting change - intensification of the downtown residential population and the development of mixed use buildings.

Has the downtown population grown since 2002?  We don't really know.  Until last year Council had never asked for statistics on the downtown population.  We now have numbers for 2015 but with only that one data point we can't really talk about growth with any certainty.  Anecdotally, however, it doesn't seem like we've added more than a handful of residents.  A couple dozen condominium units perhaps.  Meanwhile, outside of the downtown, we've experienced a boom in condominium development.  Given this, I don't think any objective observer could justify giving Council more than an F when it comes to increasing our downtown residential population.  Especially given that for all those years, while we were professing to support growth in the downtown population, we hadn't bothered to measure it.  "You can't manage what you don't measure."

Now on to the second essential tool of revitalization, mixed-use development.  Mixed-use buildings are valued because they not only bring residential population to a given area, they also bring retail space, which is essential for "activating" the street front.   I can only count one mixed use building that has been built since 2002.  It is located on 52nd Street and, in truth, it doesn't fit the model used by most urban planners when they refer to multi-use projects due to its small footprint (3,000 sqft).  Fourteen years, one (sort of) building.  I think it's fair to say that we deserve an F in this category as well.  

Is City Council truly to blame for a lack of population growth and mixed-use development in the downtown?  We're not in the condo development business, after all.  Should we perhaps blame the development community or the condo-buying community instead?  In my opinion, that wouldn't be fair.  They've been pulling their weight.  As I mentioned above, condo development since 2002 has been a runaway success - it just hasn't happened where it could have an impact on downtown revitalization.  And this is and was very much within the City's control.  As is the form of development.  Strategies for attracting mixed use buildings to a revitalization target area are well known and have been for a long time.  Twenty or so great examples are contained in this 2004 CMHC how-to guide for cities.  

Now for the silver lining.  Both Council and the City's administrators have been learning by trial and error.  Attempts have been made to incentivize development through tax abatements, grants, parking requirement reductions and even land assembly, although the latter has been imperfectly applied in my opinion.  On at least one occasion these incentive programs have been measured, have been found wanting, and have been beefed up.  It's time to repeat this evaluation because, in the eyes of developers, the costs and risks of developing in our downtown still outweigh the benefits.  We know what tools other cities use to spur downtown development; we've tried to use some of these same tools; it hasn't worked; we now need bigger tools and more of them.

The other positive in this whole situation is that in the last two years, City Council has shifted its focus.  Prior to about 2015, Council supported a number of beautification and streetscaping projects in our downtown.  But the redevelopment of 52nd Avenue, with its now-infamous bike lane, served as a turning point in Council sentiment towards these types of projects  - or at least their role as the primary tool of revitalization.  A civic plaza proposal on the 50/50 lot has failed to receive Council support two years in row now, and this year a 50th street revitalization project was also rejected - with comments focusing mainly on the fact that it seemed premature.  This is not to say Council isn't investing in the downtown, it is just doing so it different ways - ways that should lay the groundwork for revitalization.  In the 2017 budget alone Council approved new or continued funding for joint Federal/Territortial Municipal Housing First Program, the Day Shelter, a Homelessness Coordinator position, a pilot program to provide short-term employment for residents experiencing homelessness, another pilot program for mobile Street Outreach Services, and a substantial outlay for a new Community Safety Officer program (which will require matching funds from the GNWT to get off the ground).  These commitments should send a message to the development community that the downtown is on its way to becoming a safer place for all residents and a more attractive place to live, work and play.

And let's be clear, attracting development should be the most strategically important objective of our downtown revitalization initiatives.  We have ventured far into Territorial Government territory with our investments in public safety and social programs, aided in large part by federal funding that won't last forever.  Once the federal funding runs out, I don't believe taxpayers will accept an increase in property taxes to make up the gap.  But if we've succeeded in attracting development and thereby increasing the downtown tax base, we shouldn't have to raise taxes.

So, if I were to give City Council grades in several important downtown-related categories they would be as follows:

Increasing the residential population of downtown Yellowknife - F

Attracting mixed-use development - F

Trying out various development incentives and figuring out what doesn't work - B- (because we could have figured this out 8-10 years ago)

Shifting the focus away from streetscaping and beautification towards social spending and public safety - A+

Approving a slate of projects in the 2017 budget that can and should make a real difference not only in people's lives but in improving the investment climate downtown - A++

A mixed report card to be sure, but it's trending in the right direction.

 

 

 

YZF Airport Improvement Fee - Part 3

A lot has happened since I last wrote on this topic.  Representatives from the Department of Transportation have been busy meeting with stakeholders, including City Councillors, in an effort to clear up some misconceptions about the YZF proposal.  I had the opportunity to meet with them about five weeks ago and they did a very good job of allaying most of my fears about this project (as expressed in my previous two posts in this series).

The Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce has also been busy asking pointed questions of the DOT and circulating the responses to their membership.  I'd like to post two of those responses here because they mirror my greatest concerns.

1.     Bill 7 does not state that the funds generated at the Yellowknife Airport must be re-invested into the Yellowknife Airport. Can you point me to the legislation, policies or documentation that formally state that all funds generated at the Yellowknife Airport, must be spent at the Yellowknife Airport?

 

The Bill amends the Revolving Funds Act to set up a revolving fund for YZF.  It is set up “for the purpose of meeting the capital, operating and maintenance requirements of the Yellowknife Airport.”  It is section 2(2) of the existing Revolving Funds Act that states that “The assets in a revolving fund must be used only for the purpose for which the revolving fund is established.” 

 

When read together, the amendment and s. 2(2) will result in the establishment of a revolving fund where all revenues generated by the Yellowknife Airport must be used only for meeting the capital, operating and maintenance requirements of the Yellowknife Airport.

 

 

2.     Can you explain to me how the funds generated from the AIF and landing fees will be divided into O&M and Capital? Will there be any financial support from the GNWT in regards to O&M initially? Or the plan is self-sustaining from the get-go? If self-sustaining, what percentage of funds generated will go towards O&M vs Capital projects?

 

The funds from the Yellowknife Airport AIF will be segregated and applied to capital expenditures.  The aeronautical fees (including landing fees and general terminal fees) will be applied to O&M.  As this will be a revolving fund, it will be self-sustaining and responsible for all capital and O&M expenses for the Yellowknife Airport as soon as it is set up.  

 

The Yellowknife Airport already collects aeronautical (landing fees and general terminal fees) and non-aeronautical fees (such as parking and rental/lease payments). Currently, these revenues go to GNWT general revenues.  As soon as the revolving fund is established, those revenues will go directly to the Yellowknife Airport.  Therefore, there will be no need for any initial financial support from the GNWT for O&M expenses.  

 

100% of the monies collected from the AIF will go towards capital; revenues from other fees will be used operations and maintenance.  The fees charged to the airlines and other airport users will be set to fully cover the cost of operations.  The draft YZF Business Plan contains more detailed financial projections.  It can be found on our website on the YZF Airport Evolution page at:  http://www.dot.gov.nt.ca/Airports/Yellowknife/Yellowknife-Airport-Evolution

 

My other main concern about this proposal was the fact that the GNWT was stopping short of establishing an airport authority and handing over governance of YZF.  While I haven't yet completely given up my preference for the airport authority model, I do acknowledge that there is no guarantee that we could operate an effective airport authority in Yellowknife.  We are a small city in a small territory - we may not have the capacity.  That's not a certainty, but it clearly is a risk.  And given the NWT's dependence on YZF, it's understandable that the GNWT might not want to take this risk.

 

There are two other aspects to this that I'd like to quickly touch on.  I've been critical of the suggestion that a Business Advisory Panel will have the ability to inject entrepreneurial thinking into the management of YZF, but DOT representatives pointed out to me the BAP is not the only means by which this will be achieved.  Perhaps even more significant is the mandate change handed down by Territorial Cabinet.  Yellowknifers and all northerners want more direct flights to southern cities.  In the past, more flights meant more traffic and higher operating costs, but no change to the budget - the same dollars spread more thinly.  Now, any new routes will result in additional traffic but also higher revenues.  That's a very simple and very significant change.  And the same applies not only to flights, but of management of the parking areas, lands surrounding the airport and other revenue sources as well.

 

The final item I'd like to touch on is the $4 million dollars the GNWT used to spend at YZF which will now be spent elsewhere.  There are those who argue that we should have insisted that they keep that $4 million dollars in place while at the same time giving us the $14 million (or $12 million - I can't recall the exact number) projected to be raised through fees.  On this point I would remind readers that, in some cases, politics is the art of the possible.  Keeping the $4 million and gaining the new revenues would have been a hard sell to MLAs outside of Yellowknife.  

 

Under the status quo arrangement, I have zero confidence we will ever see capital expenditures on things like a runway extension - either from the GNWT or the federal government.  With this new fee structure, we may see such investments within the next decade.  If this plan goes forward, it will be up to MLAs, City Councillors and Yellowknifers in general to make sure the GNWT lives up to its promises, and that these much needed investments materialize.

 

 

YZF Airport "Improvement Fee" - Part 2

Some pretty bold claims are being put forward by the GNWT with respect to their airport improvement fee proposal. In this sponsored post on Edge North they say that "this approach will ensure all funds generated at the Yellowknife Airport will stay at the Airport for operations, maintenance and capital improvements." But can they really deliver on this promise? If the fees go into a revolving fund, the Legislative Assembly will still control how they are spent. Will a runway extension ever really take priority over, say, safety concerns at other NWT airports? And given that YZF is a territorial hub that sees traffic from all NWT communities, will other communities not have a fair argument that they should share in revenues? It's hard to see how this doesn't end up being a new source of funds for improvements to all NWT airports (or schools, or health centres), funded disproportionately by Yellowknifers and visitors to Yellowknife. Clearly that's unfair. If the GNWT doesn't have a mechanism to ensure that all funds are either spent at YZF, or, barring that, somehow returned to those who paid it, then this is not a fee at all, it's a tax. As such, if it goes forward, it should be called a tax and it should be collected at all NWT airports equitably. 

I would also appreciate an explanation from the GNWT as to why they continue to refer to the funds spent at YZF as a "subsidy." I'd love to know what the "subsidy" is at the Inuvik airport, or the Aurora College campus in Ft. Smith. Completely misleading, in my opinion. They should just say that YZF operates at a loss, which it does (as do all territorial facilities). They should also say that, in other cities, airports that previously operated at a loss became profitable back in the 1990s thanks in part to airport improvement fees. To complete that explanation, however, they need to point out that in each of these instances the airport improvement fee was accompanied by the establishment of an airport authority. As I've said before, implementing an Airport Improvement Fee without and Airport Authority amounts to cash grab.

One final point, if the Airport Improvements Fees are to be directed towards improvements (as implied by the name), then presumably the aeronautical (landing) fees will go towards operations and maintenance. But the GNWT may not have the same ability to raise landing fees as it does airport improvement fees - unless they want to lose routes and encourage flyovers. So if the landing fees are not sufficient to cover losses on the O&M side, will the Airport Improvement Fees then become Airport Operations, Maintenance and Improvement fees? Or will the GNWT continue to top up the O&M side and thereby prevent the "improvement fee" from becoming something else entirely.

This whole situation has me very worried. I sincerely hope the regular MLAs are given the opportunity to truly examine this proposal before it is implemented. They haven't been given that opportunity yet. If this goes forward without these critical questions being answered to the satisfaction of Yellowknifers, then Yellowknifers should rightly be furious.

How to Tell the Difference Between an Airport Improvement Fee and a Cash Grab

I am now officially very concerned about the GNWT’s proposal to introduce new fees at the Yellowknife airport without a commitment to handing over governance to a local airport authority.  I’m also more than a bit bothered by the one-sided sales pitch that has accompanied the proposal so far.  It’s time for City Council, Yellowknife MLAs and the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce to take a closer look at this and weigh in before it’s too late.

What Would a Revitalized Downtown Look Like?

At the beginning of my last post I presented two questions that I don't think we are currently making adequate attempts to answer.  The first was "how can we revitalize our downtown?"

The second question and the topic of this post is "What would a revitalized downtown Yellowknife look like?"  And for the sake of spurring discussion, I'll add a time frame.  20 years from now, if we have achieved revitalization, what will our downtown look like?

In my first version of this post I droned on quite a bit about how I don't think the right people have asked themselves this question, namely city councillors and city planners.  I won't repeat that here, but I do want to provide you with an image to illustrate the point that we need to have this conversation.

Most readers probably won't recognize the illustration above.  It was produced in 2010 as part of the Smart Growth Development Plan.  You can find it on page 22 of the Urban Design Initiative.  The problem with the illustration is that to accomplish this feat of revitalization, you would have to first tear down a multi-million dollar and recently renovated mall, the Centre Ice Plaza.  Clearly, this is not something that is likely to happen in the next 30 years.  So my question is, where can we reasonably hope to accomplish revitalization?  Which streets are we likely to be able to revitalize?  

The 2002 Downtown Plan envisioned Franklin Avenue (50^th Ave) as our retail main street. But as it stands right now, Franklin is more of a transportation corridor than a shopping district. Vehicles can’t park on it between 8am and 9am or 4:30pm and 6pm. Several blocks are occupied by new or recently renovated office buildings - retail dead zones - which aren’t going anywhere for the next 50 years. These aren’t the characteristics of streets that are suitable targets for retail revitalization, even over a long time period like 20 years. So if Franklin Avenue isn’t the answer, then what is?

Is it 50^th Street? If you were to take a look at our various Franklin Avenue cross streets and consider the age and state of the buildings, 50^th Street is a pretty good candidate. Even without City intervention (i.e. civic plaza and continued land assembly), several buildings on 50^th are not likely to be around in two decades. The same can’t be said of most other downtown cross-streets.

But – and this is a big “but” – the mid block of 50^th Street has the worst retail dead zone in the entire city on its northeast side – the Center Square Mall. Can any street become a retail hotspot with such a liability holding it back? For clarification, I consider the mall a liability due more to the fact that it’s an indoor mall without a single customer entrance on its entire 600 ft-long 50^th Street facade than the fact that it’s half vacant (although the two issues are surely related). If the two REITs that own the mall were willing, could it be transformed from a liability into an asset? Is there even a conceivable way to accomplish this? If not, is there a way to overcome the mall obstacle by having a third party build a structure where the mall parking lot (which is owned by the City and is only informally a mall parking lot) now stands?

These are obviously pretty difficult questions to answer. But if we could answer them and come to a consensus on the location of our retail “main street” of the future, I think we would finally break free of the inertia that has kept us from making progress for the last fifteen years.  Revitalization initiatives undertaken by the City would achieve concentrated and therefore noticeable results, confidence among residents and stakeholders would rise and momentum would build.

One of the initiatives we could undertake pretty quickly would be a revived Façade Improvement Grant Program.  The last program failed for two reasons - it didn't target a small enough area (Old Airport Road, Old Town and fifteen or so blocks of downtown were eligible by the time the program was shelved) and we didn't have anyone assigned to working with businesses to access the grant.  In other cities this role is filled either by city staff or by third parties who work closely with businesses on a daily basis (e.g. chambers of commerce or business improvement associations).  Another program that has worked in other cities is similar to a facade grant but can be applied to improvements to the interior of new businesses. Edmonton’s Development Incentive Program is one example.  Like the facade grant, an integral part of the success of such a program would be helping business owners access the grant, from filling out paperwork to working with interior designers.  Besides creating new programs, other current revitalization tools could be tweaked to increase their effectiveness.  Rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars street-scaping at the periphery of the downtown (52^nd Avenue) or beautifying blocks with no retail potential (52^nd street between Franklin and 49^th Ave) the City could concentrate streetscaping and beautification resources where they have a chance of making a difference. And while we might not be able to put an end to disruptive and aggressive behaviour across all fifteen blocks of our downtown, surely we could improve things on one street. We all know that’s something shoppers and tourists would appreciate.

Over the course of the next year, I’m hoping to encourage Yellowknifers to start asking these very important questions. And in fact this weekend I’m headed to BIABC/International Downtown Association's annual conference in Vancouver – which is sure to be packed with professionals who ask and answer these types of questions for a living.  This will be my third time attending, but unlike the last two years I’ll be joined this year by two other City Councillors (Morse and Silverio), the City’s director of Communications and Economic Development and five members of the Yellowknife business community. I’m hopeful that we can not only spend many hours knocking around ideas, but also tap into the expertise of professionals in retail revitalization. I’m very optimistic that good things are going to come out of this, and I look forward to getting to work on solutions in the very near future.

If you’ve read this very long post in its entirety, chances are you’re someone who is very concerned about the state of our downtown and/or you’re generally interested in downtown revitalization, in Yellowknife or elsewhere. If so, I would really appreciate hearing from you on the two key questions posed above: what are the constituent parts of Yellowknife’s potential downtown revitalization solution, and what could a revitalized downtown Yellowknife look like in twenty years?

Adrian Bell

abell@yellowknife.ca

(867) 446-9800

How Can We Revitalize Our Downtown?

Although the state of our downtown is an issue that ranks very high on Yellowknifers’ lists of concerns about our city, we spend surprisingly little time speaking about possible solutions publicly. I can’t remember the last time I read an article online or in the newspaper debating the how, where and when of downtown revitalization. A lot of time is spent talking about important and related issues like homelessness, and some time is spent examining the downtown-related City Council agenda item of the week, such as food truck regulations or the 50/50 civic plaza proposal, but the broader overarching conversation doesn’t seem to be taking place.

I see this as a real problem, because there are some key questions that haven’t been asked and answered. And until we answer these questions, progress will be slow going.

The questions I think we need to spend some time on are:

1. How can we revitalize our downtown?  What are the constituent parts of a comprehensive downtown revitalization strategy?
2. What would a revitalized downtown look like?  Where would our retail "main street" be located?

The question of how to revitalize our downtown was last asked in 2002 as part of the City's Downtown Plan consultation process. The Plan had a lot of merit, but the implementation of its recommendations was deemed complete by about 2008 and it was relegated to the shelf that all such reports eventually end up on. Attention shifted to the Smart Growth Plan, which didn’t end up saying a whole lot about the downtown. I can see now that rather than simply retiring the Downtown Plan, members of the Downtown Enhancement Committee (of which I was one) should have insisted on a sober evaluation of the success or failure of the Plan, followed by an update with a brand new list of recommendations.  But we didn't do that, and so the question of "how" was never adequately answered.

Without diving in to a new consultation process, I think it would be useful if we could at least have a discussion about the constituent parts of “how.” We might then be able to discuss who might be responsible for each area, come up with some concrete proposals for initiatives in each category, and then bring the ideas forward to the various responsible parties.   That may sound oversimplified, but the truth is, after several years of attending conferences, reading online articles, obsessing over the issue and otherwise informally researching downtown revitalization, I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually is very simple. It is a well-understood problem with decades of case studies, academic papers, well-articulated urban planning theories and examples of tried and true solutions, which makes our lack of progress all the more frustrating for me.  So I'm all for keeping things simple and moving forward.

Coming up with a breakdown of a possible solution to our “downtown problem” has to be a group project, but to get the conversation started I've come up the list below.  For the moment, please ignore the fact that some of these solutions might require infinite resources, which we clearly don’t have.

• House the homeless (day and night)
• Employ the unemployed
• Provide better access to addictions treatment
• Diagnose and treat mental health issues
• Support small businesses
• Increase the downtown residential population
• Improve the enforcement of laws against causing a disturbance and drinking in public
• Reduce unwanted behaviour through education, outreach and bylaw implementation and enforcement
• Clean up the downtown and keep it clean
• Beautify streets and sidewalks (“streetscaping”)
• Support public art projects in strategic locations
• Beautify existing building facades and ensure that new ones meet minimum architectural standards
• Preserve sunny areas (a key consideration in a winter city)
• “Activate” sidewalks and other public spaces (widen sidewalks, facilitate walking and biking, zone against office space at street level, support the development of patios)
• Plant more trees and taking better care of the ones we have
• Ensure that shoppers have access to adequate a cheap parking
• Build appealing parks and other public spaces
• Control the location and number of clubs, saloons and other alcohol-primary establishments
• Attract “anchor tenants” to the downtown core (e.g. a post-secondary institution)

Over the course of the next six months I’d like to work on this list with the help of interested parties, drill down into the individual items a bit, and see if we can come up with the beginnings of a plan. Some of the items on this list are obviously pretty daunting, and although we should ultimately aspire to find complete solutions in the long term, we may have to be satisfied with simply making some progress in the short term. Other items on the list, however, are pretty simple. Chalking up victories in many of these areas is simply a matter of proposing initiatives, evaluating them, building support for the good ones, funding them, and implementing them effectively.

In my next post I'll address the second questions mentioned at the top of this post: what would a revitalized downtown look like?

 

 

Budget 2016: General Fund Budget Continues to Grow

It's that time of year.  Budget deliberations begin next week and I'm going to be taking a bit of a different approach.  Arguments for and against individual expenditures should be presented and debated in public meetings so I can't go into much detail, but I did want to post the following table:  

Year	General Fund Expenditures (thousands)	Growth
2004	$19,218
2005	$20,866	9%
2006	$22,469	8%
2007	$22,534	0%
2008	$24,999	11%
2009	$26,751	7%
2010	$28,424	6%
2011	$29,469	4%
2012	$30,307	3%
2013	$31,185	3%
2014	$32,359	4%
2015	$34,549	7%
2016	$35,620	3%

 

I've been on the record in the past lamenting the fact that each and every year Council focuses on the Capital Fund budget but leaves the General Fund budget untouched.  I think the table above demonstrates this (keep in mind that we had taxes increases of 0%, 3% and 0% in 2013, 2014 and 2015).  How is it possible that we can increase the General Fund budget every year yet only raise taxes by these small amounts?  Here are the possible answers:

1. We increase user fees
2. We receive more grants from senior levels of government
3. We expand our tax base 
4. We reduce capital expenditures, which reduces the annual transfer from the General Fund to the Capital Fund.

The City has been successful at negotiating increases in grants from other levels of government, and it has also worked hard to expand the tax base in a cost effective manner (with mixed results).  And yes, it has increased user fees substantially.  But the thing that worries me most is that I've watched Council very effectively cut capital projects in order to reduce the interfund transfer.  If we continue to rely on this as our main lever for keeping property taxes in check, eventually we're going to start cutting into much needed asset maintenance and replacement budgets.  Although I'd like to say we're not there yet, I've seen several important projects disappear from the budget entirely, and not at the request of Council.  One example is the block of 50th Street between 51st Avenue and 52nd Avenue.  It has been schedule for sidewalk and road replacement for nine years, yet all of a sudden it has completely disappeared from the next three budgets.  And the sidewalks are literally crumbling.

Ultimately I think we have three choices: increase taxes, increase fees even more, or rein in the general fund.  If we don't do one of these three things (or all three in combination) the impact on City infrastructure will become impossible to ignore.

My preference is a modest increase in user fees where they have not yet caught up to costs, zero or sub-inflation increase to taxes, and a reduction in the general fund budget. 

Correction: in an earlier version of this post I failed to account for the fact that in 2010 the City began including amortization in its expenditures. The table above has now had the amortization amounts removed from the budget totals.

Calling all Yellowknife Tech and Web Entrepreneurs

Looking for a great side business/community service idea on this fine Saturday morning? Here are two cost-of-living-reducing initiatives that I believe require your urgent attention.

1. Car Share App/Website

In my day job as a Realtor, I meet a lot of people who want to live downtown to be close to work, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. They appreciate the simplicity of condo life - very little maintenance, no yards to maintain, sidewalks to shovel, etc. Although we don't have a huge supply of condos downtown, I believe this is going to change over the next decade, and it will have spinoff benefits on a variety of fronts. But the one thing that could really launch this trend into the stratosphere would be a well designed car share program. Owning, parking, insuring, maintaining a car is very expensive (for the sake of discussion let's say it's between $500 and $750 a month including depreciation), and people who live in downtown condos only really need about one-tenth of a car - so why aren't Yellowknife's condo boards finding a way to help people share cars? There are versions of car share programs out there that are gaining in popularity (i.e. http://www.bcaa.com/car-share/car-share), but none of them are quite right for our northern environment. But with a little bit of R&D and some government funding, it would be a snap to develop the perfect YK car share application. 

2. "Rent Buddy" App

You may be familiar with the Gas Buddy app (http://www.gasbuddy.com) which allows consumers find the cheapest gas station in their area. Simply put, we need this for apartments and rental properties. We need "Rent Buddy". The key to keeping admin costs low for such an app is to follow Gas Buddy's example and encourage tenants to input their rents and lease terms themselves. Gas Buddy depends on a community conscientious drivers to provide price information, without whom the app is useless. A couple of years ago it had no Yellowknife info whatsoever, but nowadays, because people are contributing, it has all our gas stations listed and usually has our latest prices. If Yellowknife renters could see what their neighbours are paying for rent, I have no doubt rents would come down across town.

So there we go. Techies (sp?) of Yellowknife, your city needs you.

Whistleblower Policy

Just a quick update for those who spoke to me during the recent election campaign about the need to establish a whistleblower policy at the City of Yellowknife: I brought the idea forward for discussion this past Monday and it was very well received. I have now provided formal "notice of motion," so pending the support of Council this coming Monday, City staff will be looking into options for creating such a policy. The timeline I've suggested is the end of February. Here is an example of a whistleblower policy that I think would do a lot of good here in YK.

http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/cityhall/whistleblower

Improving Lives, Improving Our Downtown

There is simply no substitute for door-to-door campaigning when it comes to obtaining valuable feedback from residents.  I've had a lot of great conversations at people's doors over the last few weeks, but one discussion in particular made me look at an important Yellowknife issue in a new light.  I was speaking with an experienced social worker, I'll call her Anne, whose office is located downtown close to the day shelter.  Anne, like many of us, feels conflicted about the state of our downtown.  Several times a week she has uncomfortable interactions with people she identifies as members of our homeless population.  Some, she says, appear inebriated, going about their business fairly harmlessly.  Others, however, are boisterous and rude, and just generally inconsiderate of those around them.   I got the impression that Anne would never set foot in our downtown if her office weren’t there, and that certainly she would not bring her children there if she could help it.

Increase the Territorial Cost of Living Tax Credit

Of all the issues facing Yellowknifers right now, the one I'm hearing about most at people's doors is our high cost of living.  As a city councillor, it can be frustrating to grapple with this issue given that we have so few tools at our disposal to lower people's costs.  Several speakers pointed out at last's night's Alternatives North forum that reductions in property taxes have minimal impacts on annual household budgets - a 1% reduction would equal roughly $50/yr on a $300,000 property.  For three years now Council has worked hard to keep property taxes and user fees in check, but ultimately our efforts aren't providing the kind of relief that makes a real difference in people's lives. 

There are other areas we can look at, but none of them promise relief in the immediate future.  Our power distribution contract comes up for renewal in a few years, and we may be able to negotiate a more favourable arrangement at that time.  We may also be able to find a way to incentivize homeowners to make energy saving investments - such as the purchase of pellet stoves - but setting up such a program would require legislative changes by the GNWT, meaning it could take years. 

Having said that, one thing Council can do in the short term is work with other NWT communities to lobby those who do have an ability to make more immediate changes - our counterparts in the Legislative Assembly.  One initiative I'll be asking our MLAs to support is an increase in the territorial Cost of Living Tax Credit.  The Tax Credit is like the federal Northern Resident's Tax Deduction, but it differs in several ways - the most important of which is our likelihood of actually achieving an increase.  Ottawa is far removed from the North and our MP is one of 338 voices, whereas the Legislative Assembly is right here in Yellowknife and all nineteen MLAs have constituents with shared cost of living concerns.

Where to Vote on Monday, October 19th

Things may get a bit confusing on Monday October 19th, given that both the municipal and federal elections will be taking place on that day.  Refer to the information below from the City's election webpage to make sure your voice is heard!  And click here to ensure that you are eligible to vote and that your household has been enumerated.  If you are not on the voter's list you can still vote at your polling station (as long as you are a Canadian resident, are 18 years of age and have lived in Yellowknife for 12 consecutive months), but you'll be asked to signed a declaration of eligibility - which means it will take a bit longer than if you sign up in advance.

From the City's Election webpage:

Although the City of Yellowknife does not divide the municipality into Wards for the purpose of electing Councillors or Trustees, voters are required to vote at the poll location designated by their Poll Divisions. The Poll Division locations are as follows:

Poll 1 (Great Slave) - Ecole Sir John Franklin High School
Poll 2 (YK North) - Ecole St. Patrick's High School
Poll 3 (YK Centre) - Northern United Place
Poll 4 (Frame Lake) - William McDonald School
Poll 5 (Range Lake) - Range Lake North School
Poll 6 (Kam Lake) - Multiplex Arena
Poll 7 (YK South) - N.J. Macpherson School

Please refer to the map of the Polling Divisions [posted below - to view the full-sized map click here]

For further information, please contact the Office of the Returning Officer at 920-5602, or email cityclerk@yellowknife.ca.

My Platform

It has been a great honour to serve Yellowknifers as a City Councillor for the last three years.  If re-elected to Council, I’ll work for change in five key areas: 

1. Improving Core Services
2. Better Lobbying for Strategic Objectives
3. Spending Transparency & Scrutiny
4. Broadening Our Downtown Strategy
5. Improving Accountability

Improving Core Services – I want Council to take a hard look at our most basic services and consider increasing budgets in certain areas:

Youth Housing Project Opens in Yellowknife

-Media Release-

 

YELLOWKNIFE, NORTHWEST TERRITORIES  |  SEPTEMBER 22, 2015 

 

The SideDoor Youth Ministries and the City of Yellowknife’s Community Advisory Board on Homelessness are celebrating the opening of Hope’s Haven, a housing project aimed at supporting youth ages 16 to 24. Hope’s Haven is a twelve unit building and the only one of its kind in Northwest Territories. 

 

At 3:00 pm on Thursday, September 24, 2015, please join Mayor Mark Heyck as he officially announces the opening of Hope’s Haven, located at 5114-52 Street. 

 

In addition to providing housing, the project is aimed at helping youth attain the stability required for the successful transition to adulthood, independence and permanent housing.

Campaign 2015

It's hard to believe three years have gone by and we're now off and running in a new City Council election campaign.  Today is the deadline for nominations and so far it looks like Yellowknifers will have a lot of excellent options from which to build a new City Council.  I am proud to once again throw my hat in the ring.  I hope that my work over the last term has met with your approval, and that you consider my goals and objectives for the next three years to be worthwhile.  With your support, I will continue to work hard for our future.  Please stay tuned to this website for my 2015 platform and posts about a range of municipal issues.

I'd like to thank my Council colleagues, Mayor Mark Heyck, and City of Yellowknife staff for all their hard work since 2012.  And I would especially like to thank my wife for her unwavering support.  All the best to all the candidates.  See you on the hustings!

Interesting Snippets from the Yellowknife Business Incentive Strategy and Business Incubation Strategy Framework

 

 

Downtown Commercial Plaza Discussion

I've been fielding a lot of questions this evening about today's presentation to Council regarding a potential  Downtown Commercial Plaza development on the 50th Ave./50th St. lot.  I'll be laying out my position on this issue (and many more) in the weeks leading up to election day, but for now I thought it might be useful to post today's discussion here.  My general comments begin at 62:30.

 

 

BIABC 2015 Conference Report

Business Improvement Associations of British Columbia (BIABC) Conference in Edmonton - May 4, 5 and 6, 2015

It was a pleasure to attend the 2015 BIABC conference in Edmonton from May 4th to 6th on behalf of the City of Yellowknife.  This the second time I’ve attended a BIABC conference and once again I came away from it with a clear sense that the solutions to our downtown problems are not unique – they have been experienced and overcome by many towns and cities.  And in those cities, Business Improvement Associations have been instrumental agents of change.  

General Comments

My focus this year was to try and identify the missing pieces that are preventing us from making headway in our efforts to revitalize the downtown.  One missing piece that was hard to ignore both this year and last is our lack of a business association that is focussed on the downtown.  I have yet to find a success story that doesn’t have a BIA or some similar organization at its heart.  But an even bigger missing piece became more apparent to me this year: the City of Yellowknife’s lack of an overall vision for the downtown.  In recent years we have begun to focus on 50th Street and the 50/50 parking lot, but we haven’t talked about the rest of the downtown.  This is a problem that is much bigger than three blocks of one street.

New Bids and Tenders Webpage

A tip of the hat to City Hall administration for the new and improved Bids and Tenders webpage.  You can now look up any awarded contract and see how many companies requested the bid documents, submitted bids, who won the bid, what the dollar amount was and in some cases the bid score.

To see what I mean go to this page and select "awarded" from the status drop-down menu. Then click on bid details for one of the awarded contracts.

Improved access to contracts information is something this Council has been pushing for since the 2013 budget discussions, two months after the 2012 election.  Mission accomplished.  Chalk one up in the "improving transparency" column!

Response to Yellowknifer Editorial on Business Improvement Districts

The following letter to the editor appeared in today's Yellowknifer.

Dear Editor,

I'm grateful that your newspaper has deemed the issue of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) important enough to wade into at the editorial level, but I would appreciate the opportunity to correct some of the mistaken assumptions made in your editorial ("Downtown businesses need more support, not taxes," Feb. 18).

The first thing your readers need to know is that if the downtown business community doesn't willingly support the formation of a BID, a BID won't be formed ... period. This would not be a case of the City "squeezing" the business community (your words). The tax that you refer to in your column would be self-imposed, or not imposed at all. 

Do We Need a Second Downtown?

This coming Monday (Feb 23rd) Council will be debating two proposed changes to the Development Incentive Program.  The first change promises to make condo construction in the downtown more attractive to developers, but the second proposes to allow multi-family (apartment) construction on Old Airport Road between Byrne Road and the northern end of Borden Drive.  If approved, will this undermine efforts to revitalize the downtown by creating a new residential and commercial core at the south end of town?

When this issue was before the Municipal Services Committee two weeks ago, I argued that we need to give the downtown incentives time to bear fruit before we open up other areas for multi-family development.  You can watch the hour-long debate here.

Monday's final debate on this issue will be interesting, and the vote could have a huge impact on the future of our downtown.  I would love to hear from folks on this prior to Monday night.

Response to EdgeYK Article on Business Improvement Districts

(You'll find the EdgeYK article here.  I felt compelled to respond because BIDs aren't very well understood and I believe the YK Chamber survey clouded the issue further, despite their intention to provide their members with clarification.)

It should be pointed out that the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce was not able to differentiate between survey respondents who work or own businesses in the downtown core and those who work elsewhere. They attempted to gather this information, but my understanding is that it didn't work out as planned. So the question remains, do downtown business owners and office tenants support the creation of a downtown BID? That's a question that can't really be asked until substantial work is done by the City, the YK Chamber and others to educate downtown business owners about the pros and cons of forming a BID.

Readers should bear in mind that the taxation referred to in the article above would be entirely self-imposed. It can't be imposed by the City, the Chamber, or any other third party. Downtown business owners and office tenants would have to vote to be taxed. A threshold of support (to be determined, but probably two thirds) would have to be surpassed before the BID could be formed. If the support isn't there, the tax won't be there either.

But if the support is there, the City's role would be to collect the tax and turn it over to the BID. The BID would then spend those funds on things like extra litter pickups and street cleaning in the BID area, event coordination (Raven Mad Daze?), marketing and promotion, lobbying the City and GNWT on files related to the downtown, working with the Day Shelter, Housing Corporation and others to ensure the needs of the homeless community are being met, business recruitment, and a more community-minded approach to crime prevention by the RCMP, MED and volunteer agencies. While some may see these types of services as "luxuries", I see them as the basic necessities for bringing shoppers back to the downtown core.

Care would have to be taken to ensure that the BID doesn't end up absorbing work that should rightly be done by the City, GNWT or others. This is a common fear among BIDs in Canada, but it can be prevented through the benchmarking of service levels before the BID is put in place.

Clearly I'm biased in favour of BIDs, but that's because I've seen what they can do. As as downtown business owner for close to 20 years, I would vote to be taxed if I knew the funds would be used to improve our downtown core. And as a City Councillor, I know that a BID has more potential to improve our downtown than any other single tool available to us.

Maclean's Magazine Yellowknife Video

This is great.  I'm not sure I would say the modern world hasn't touched Yellowknife, but I agree with the gist of what McBryan is saying.  Yellowknife is certainly unique.

Yellowknife Gas Prices: the Deadlock is Broken!

A huge thanks to Esso for their bold decision today to break the multi-year citywide gas pricing deadlock.  They are now priced four cents below other retailers.  I highly encourage consumers, expecially non Co-op members, to reward Esso with their business.  We need to show retailers that we are willing to reward fair and competitive pricing policies.

The price of gas in Yellowknife has changed for the first time in 3 years #yzf pic.twitter.com/6vVLE7O0Lx

— CBC North (@CBCNorth) November 19, 2014

Yellowknife Gas Prices: Next Steps

This coming Monday City Council will be having a discussion about gas prices and, if all goes well, I'm hoping we'll direct City administration to engage in discussions with our local gas retailers.  This Council has put a high priority on building partnerships with other organizations and it's my hope that this approach will allow us to find a lasting solution to the pricing deadlock that has prevailed for the last couple of years.  If nothing else, it's a first step toward determining what other actions, if any, should be taken by Council - and by consumers.

My hope is that City Admin can find answers to the question of how our retailers are setting their prices and whether or not their methods differ from how gas prices are set in other cities. Once we have that information, the next question to be asked, perhaps by Council or perhaps by others, is whether or not the prevailing pricing model is fair. I imagine there are a wide variety of pricing models for gas, but I can only think of three - two of them are fair in my opinion and one is not.  Retailers could take the "rack price" - the price at which they buy gas from their suppliers - and apply a fixed margin to it, say 10 cents.  I don't have to conduct a survey to conclude that Yellowknifers would love to see this model in use.  Or instead of a fixed dollar amount, retailers could apply a fixed percentage margin, say 10%.  The third model would entail retailers looking at what their competitors are doing and then matching their prices.  In the world of gas sales, a troubling dynamic can emerge when a small number of competitors employ this third model.  The retailers will eventually come to regard one of their group members as a "price leader."  They will all look to that one retailer to set prices, which they will then match.  From that point forward, if the price leader opts not to reduce prices, prices stay frozen.  This is not active collusion - they aren't meeting in dark alleys or exchanging coded messages - but it is collusion nonetheless.  It's referred to as tacit collusion - an unspoken understanding between retailers.  Rather than spending money on marketing, expanding service offerings, competing on price and generally fighting over customers, retailers simply play follow the leader and keep tapping into a nice juicy profit margin on their own piece of market share.  A cursory internet search will show you that this is a well known, and despised, model of gas pricing.

If it's happening here, the situation is even worse.  In most of small town Canada, the next small town usually isn't so far away that consumers can't drive there in protest and fill up their tanks.  That's not a possibility for us.  We are truly a captive market.  So in our case, in the absence of regulation, there would seem to be only two things that can lead to lower prices.  As rack prices drop retailers may eventually become overwhelmed with a sense of shame that they are swimming in too much profit.  Or one of the retailers could choose to stop colluding with the other group members and adopt one of the more fair pricing models.  It only takes one of them making this switch to completely change the market.

So why would a profit-driven business choose to become our "gas champion?"  Well, they would have to believe that by offering drivers a fair deal, they will be rewarded with loyalty - not only for their gas but for their other products too.  And this is where consumers come in.  I'm hoping people will keep an eye on this situation, and, if and when we find a champion, we follow through and reward that champion with our business.  That's the "carrot" approach.  The "stick" approach would be for us to stop buying gas and other products from the price leader, if identifying the price leader is realistically done.  If enough of us did this, I imagine it would eventually have an impact.  

I would guess that the "stick" technique is more often employed in these situations than the "carrot." But we're not there yet.  And Yellowknife is not like other cities.  I'm confident we can get to where we need to go through partnership building, lobbying and the promise of customer loyalty.

 

Yellowknife's Proposed 3% Property Tax Increase in 2015 is Actually 6%

With one week to go before the release of the 2015 budget, I want to draw taxpayers' attention to two very unsettling trends in City revenue collection.

Issue number one is the shifting of expenses from the General Fund to the Water and Sewer and Solid Waste Facility Funds.  First some background (skip this paragraph to get to the simpler explanation).  The General Fund is one of several City funds that we use to pay for City operations, programs and services.  It is where most of your property taxes go, although it does also draw from user fees to a lesser extent.  Another large fund is the Capital Fund, which we use to pay for capital projects.   But we also have a couple of smaller, specialized funds that are set aside from the General Fund and used to pay for specific things like the operation of the solid waste facility and our water and sewer infrastructure.  These funds have traditionally been replenished every year by a combination of property taxes (through transfers from the General Fund) and user fees.  I'm not sure when the process started, but City Hall has been trying to wean these two funds off of General Fund transfers, making them wholly dependent on user fees.  As a part of this process, for the next three years we're being told to expect annual increases of 5% to the solid waste levy and 8% to water and sewer charges.  We're also being told that by 2019 or 2020, the annual "shift" increases will stop and these two funds will be wholly funded by user fees.

To put it a bit more simply, instead of using your property taxes to pay for the dump and the water and sewer system, we're charging you "user fees."

MED Operational Review - Have We Learned Anything Since 1995?

For anyone who is interested in the Municipal Enforcement Division operation review, here are links to both the 2014 review (released two days ago) and the 1995 Pommen and Associates Ltd. review.  The Pommen recommendations begin on page 22.

2014 - Perivale and Taylor Consulting report

Download 1995 Pommen MED Operational review

Commercial Property Tax Increase - Update

City Administration has confirmed my numbers more or less (the table they provided me with only went back to 2002 so I can't confirm my 2000 mill rate estimate).  But where I thought the numbers would show a slow, consistent rise of commercial taxes relative to residential over the last 14 years, the table below shows that it actually happened in two "bumps" in 2007 and 2014.  Those happen to be our last two general assessment years. 

As I said in my post a few days ago, the big issue here is that Council has never had a discussion about shifting the tax burden onto business owners, or onto residential property owners or anyone else for that matter.  That's not to say we couldn't have such a "taxation philosophy" conversation - we could have it at any time.  But we haven't.  It's very troubling, then, to see that this shifting of the tax burden has occurred without Council's input.  And unless I'm mistaken, it has happened without Council's knowledge.

To put this situation in context, if the business community were to lobby City Council to return to the year 2000 mill rate ratio of 1.73 times the residential rate, and if Council were to agree to do so, taxes on residential properties would rise by 20% or so.  That would make this year's increase of 3.11% seem like the good old days.

The chart below shows our mill rates (as a mulitple of the residential mill rate) since 2002.  Please note, the "Residential" line is hidden behind the "Agricultural" line. 

Here it is in table form:

	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Residential	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Multi-Residential	1.04	1.02	1.02	1.02	1.02	1.08	1.07	1.08	1.08	1.08	1.08	1.08	1.06
Commercial & Industrial	1.76	1.74	1.74	1.74	1.74	1.83	1.83	1.83	1.83	1.83	1.83	1.83	2.13
Mining & Quarrying	1.39	1.97	1.97	1.97	1.97	2.07	2.07	2.07	2.07	2.07	2.07	2.07	2.78
High Density Parking	0.88	0.87	0.87	0.87	0.87	0.96	0.96	0.96	0.96	0.96	0.96	0.96	1.11
Agricultural	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.02

Are Our Commercial Tax Rates Rising Faster than Residential?

A few weeks ago City Hall administration provided Council with historical information on assessment growth and tax collection in the City.  This was done in response to questions from a few of us on Council.  I've been mulling over the numbers and it looks to me like we are taxing businesses significantly more today, relative to residences, than we were in 2000.

The table below shows the mill rates for our various property classes in 2000, 2007 and 2014.