THUNDER BAY – City manager John Collin says he’d like to see the city’s population to grow by three per cent a year to help the city ahead of the inflation curve.
Collin, speaking at Wednesday night’s at-large townhall at Thunder Bay city hall, said he’s not looking for exponential growth, but the community can’t continue along its current population path.
The recently hired city manager said between 2016 and 2021, Thunder Bay grew by a cumulative 1.3 per cent.
“Is that good or bad? The Ontario average was 5.8 in the same five years. If you want to look nationally, the national average was 5.2. We are four times less than the national average,” Collin said.
Without comparable growth, Collin said there’s no real incentive for businesses to set up shop in Thunder Bay. Minus the tax-base growth that comes with it, the city could be in real trouble in the very near future, he said, noting over the past decade the city’s tax-base growth has averaged 0.66 per cent
Collin said over the past 10 years, the city’s tax-base growth has averaged 0.664 per cent each year. In the last five years it’s gotten a little bit worse, down to 0.44 per cent.
“If you take a look at the entirety of the 10 years, the cumulative growth rate for the city has been 7.8 per cent It doesn’t sound too bad. When you consider that inflation during that same 10-year period was very close to 32 per cent, inflation is growing at a rate four times faster than we are growing,” Collin said.
“That means every year, we have less purchasing power. Every year we have a diminished capability to provide the services that we need, because we’re not even keeping up with inflation. And it’s not even close. It’s a factor of four. That’s where the problem is.”
Collin said residents may like the city they way it stands today, but 10 years from now it will look considerably different.
“Every year, services get whittled away a little bit. We cut here, we cut there, we raise taxes a bit more than you would like. We raise user rates a bit more than everybody would like. And I would suggest to anybody who says they like the city the way it is now, that’s great. But you may not like it 10 years from now if this pattern continues.”
Collin said there’s already plenty of value in the city, adding housing isn’t a problem. In fact, compared to most CMAs in Ontario, Thunder Bay’s housing market is very reasonable.
“We can sell the city without even trying hard, so long as we put focused efforts into it,” he said.
Other communities are saying they can’t handle more growth, which Collin said could be a real opportunity for Thunder Bay.
“We can get some of that growth here and we can start to get some of the added revenues that we need from them. To be clear, I’m not for a moment suggesting we need exponential growth,” Collin said.
“I’m not talking growth about 10, 15 or 20 per cent per year, because we couldn’t handle that. The cost of housing would go through the roof. There would be lines everywhere. Nobody wants that. But a modest increase for our growth rate, from where we are now, at less than one per cent to about three per cent per year, and life would be a whole lot easier for everyone.”
Collin said that would mean more revenue to provide the services the city needs to provide and help keep the tax levy ahead of inflation.
