Unfinished Business for 2022 to 2026

1 Sustainable Development Growth

• Position the City to achieve Sustainable Development Growth (SDG) by reviewing development policy, so that all new development and redevelopment pays for itself across its entire life cycle. Growth is said to lower taxes and add to the City's revenue. This will eventually allow for 0% tax increases, provide enough revenue to run, maintain, and add to the City's growth. New development also increases the City's vacancy rate, which allows for more affordable housing, and additional revenue to allow the City to provide the much needed funding to support our communities' most vulnerable groups.

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  The SDGs push for programs that look to support marginalized social groups, including women, people living in poverty, BIPOC, and people with disabilities. To be considered sustainable, development projects need to ensure equal opportunities for growth and eliminate discriminatory practices. To achieve SDG, all new development must contribute to the tax base more that it costs the tax base throughout its entire life cycle. This is the next step after having done a life cycle cost benefit analysis of City assets and expenses. By doing that analysis we found that we are only 7% short over the next 20 years to collect enough revenue to pay for all our assets and programs. This means that we are closer to SGD than most cities. Armed with this knowledge we can change planning guidelines in order to ensure that all new development and redevelopment applications pay for themselves over their entire life cycle. In short, new development will add to the tax base in a way that lowers the need to raise taxes. At a point in the near future, I want to achieve 0% tax increases in real terms (that is adjusted for inflation) with enough revenue to run, maintain, and grow the City, while adding affordable housing.

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2 Road Maintenance

• Roads and road maintenance has been an issue for far too long. Last term, I heard that road conditions were a problem, and while I pushed for more money to be allocated to the road reconstruction budget, those efforts were undone by COVID. Now that we are opening back up and moving toward pre-COVID revenue levels, it's time to allocate more on road repair and slow down new road construction until we can pay to maintain the infrastructure we currently have.

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  I am dedicated to fix our road infrastructure by allocating more money to the road reconstruction budget. My goal is to get smooth roads and protect them over the long run from deterioration. Protecting good roads from deterioration is more cost effective than repairing dilapidated roads. We need to use our existing tax dollars in a way that will see the most growth in smooth roads by focusing on crack-filling and micro-resurfacing. Because of our response to the COVID pandemic, it gave us an $11 Million hole to fill, and now the City must balance the operations budget and start allocating funds to previous projects, including putting more focus on road repair.

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3 Affordable Housing

• I will advocate to create mixed affordable housing until every person can have access to affordable housing that costs no more that 30% of their income. This means the City can start building more affordable housing rather than just managing it. I have been arguing for building more affordable housing, and have highlighted the model of Kingston Cooperative Homes, since my first term. This would allow for market rents to support below market rents and everyone can access housing that is affordable.

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  Recently, the City overcame the misguided notion that we should just manage affordable housing, rather than build it ourselves. Despite the current housing crisis, the City had difficulties finding developers to partner with us to provide affordable housing units. So, in order to ensure we are addressing the housing crisis, the City finally overcame its reluctance to get into the development industry, and decided to build on our own. We can mortgage new builds for 40 years, whereas, developers often want to recover their investment in just 10. With an extra 30 years of possible financing, we can build a considerable amount of housing.
  
  Now that this conceptual hurdle has finally been overcome, we can start to build cooperative housing. Co-op housing calculates rent payments based on 30% of each renter's income, which means that those whose income allows for them to pay market rent, will in turn supplement below market housing. This also means that our affordable housing is secure and sustainable, while not being dependent on Federal or Provincial funding, which has not always been dependable.
  
  Additionally, to speed up the process, I want to encourage Queen's University to take more responsibility for housing more of their students. Queen's is expanding enrollment at a faster rate than housing is available, which is a major cause of the current housing crisis. If Queen's were to commit to increasing the percentage of enrolled students they house - with a goal of 90% - this would have the effect of freeing up supply, and eventually put downward pressure on housing costs throughout the city.

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4 Climate Change Adaptation

• Kingston and its residents alone can't stop or reverse climate change, so the primary goal with respect to climate change is to plan for and adapt to its effects. I have three objectives to assist with reducing the effects of climate change: 1. More trees; 2. Micro-resurfacing of roads; 3. Remediation of infrastructure to protect against extreme weather.

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  There are two simple truths: Kingston cannot stop or reverse climate change, and there are no realistic policies that could stop it, let alone reverse it. Even if we tried the maximum effort, everyone in Kingston would need to go vegan, get rid of their internal combustion engines, replace all sources of energy with renewables, be willing to lower our standard of living as the City would need to pick up the tab through massive tax increases, and the rest of the world, including corporations, would have to do their part. However, the effects of climate change are here now, so we need to adapt. I believe a three-pronged approach would help: 1. We need more trees to help reduce neighbourhood temperatures in the summer, and erosion along shore lines; 2. We need more micro-resurfacing of roads in order to protect them from the freeze-thaw cycle of winter weather conditions; 3. Most infrastructure will need remediation to protect against torrential rain, higher than average rainfall, damaging winds, as well as extreme weather events like atmospheric rivers and derechos. In short we need to build resiliency into our City that can better stand up to the weather shocks that climate change will send our way.

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5 School Safety Zones and Neighbourhood-Wide Traffic Calming

• When considering where to live, many of us take into account the safety and quietness of the neighbourhood, and Meadowbrook-Strathcona is known for having beautiful parks, great schools, quiet neighbourhoods, and is a perfect place to raise a family. However, more and more I'm hearing about cars speeding through our neighbourhoods. Community Safety Zones (CSZs) will be deployed across the city in every neighbourhood with a school. Strathcona Park has been chosen as one of the neighbourhoods to be part of the pilot project. This includes new signage, lowered speed limits, increased fines, and enforcement.

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  After a devastating loss of a Kingston elementary school student, the School Pedestrian Safety Working Group was created to help improve the safety of pedestrians around schools and their neighbouring streets. Our children need to be safe when they go to and from school each day, and our residential roads to be a place that's safe for all residents, so the group created Community Safety Zones (CSZs), which will be implemented City wide by 2024. Strathcona Park (Lord Strathcona Public School and St. Paul's Catholic School) was chosen as one of the two neighbourhoods to be part of the pilot project. This includes new signage, lowered speed limits, increased fines, and more monitoring and enforcement, at a bare minimum. Further site-specific improvements will be brought forward with recommendations presented to council by the School Pedestrian Safety Working Group, which is represented by School Boards, Public Health, Parent Council members, City Council members, Kingston Police, and Tri-Board Transportation. It is important that we use all tools available to us to ensure that these CSZs are effective.

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6 Equitable Distribution of Police Costs

• There are some properties and institutions that generate unfairly higher costs to policing that are borne by the whole community thus it is important to move the City to a more equitable distribution of police costs.

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  I want to address the increased costs of policing, especially as it relates to Queen's students and properties which generate a high volume of service calls from the police. Queen's and individuals who own those high call-for-service properties should take more steps to prevent, address, and remedy the bad and disruptive behaviour that leads to these increased police costs. Recently, excessive parties resulted in nearly $1 million in excess police costs, but Queen's University only paid about one third of that cost. The remaining two thirds was paid by Kingston tax payers. Queen's University can and should be a better neighbour and partner to the City. As a City, we cannot keep costs, and therefore taxes, down if we are continuously increasing the police budget in order to address disruptions in the University District and other high call-for-service properties.

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7 Physician Recruitment

• Too many people in our city have been faced with not having a family doctor. This causes urgent care centres, walk-in clinics, and emergency rooms to be caring for these individuals and causing longer wait times. Staff and Council have identified that over 30,000 people in Kingston do not have a family doctor, but with the data that's been compiled, I will continue to keep pressure on the Province to bring more family doctors to Kingston.

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  We know that 30,000 people in Kingston are without a family doctor, and with this data, we petitioned the Province to change our service level, which determines how many physicians are willing to come to Kingston. Essentially, after a set number of doctors are practicing in Kingston, the Province will pay any additional physicians less than their counterparts. This disincentive is how the Province limits family physicians in Kingston. Unfortunately, the Province uses a formula which includes doctors who solely service institutions, for that reason it looks like the general population of Kingston is overserved, despite the fact that many doctors in the area only work in the prisons or other institutions, and never see the general public. As a result, it is critical to change the service level designation the Province has labelled us by presenting the data and recognizing the number of doctors not serving our community members. Presenting the data was the first step, now we have to keep the pressure on the Province by reaffirming our need. In the meantime, we have been successful in attracting nine family physicians by helping finance their clinics here in Kingston. These doctors understand that they will be paid less by the Province, but are willing to wait until the service level designation changes. We all believe it is a matter of time before the Province adjusts our designation, and then the recruiting begins.

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8 Neighbourhood "Sense of Place" Policies

• Develop neighbourhood "Sense of Place" policies to put into Kingston's Official Plan which will protect the identifiable and valuable characteristics of neighbourhoods from inappropriate development and its negative effects.

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9 "Quiet City" Policy

• Develop a "Quiet City" policy to limit excessive noise like train whistles, loud modified mufflers, loud parties, and develop a more robust and rigorous noise bylaw that allows all to advance the quiet enjoyment of the city.

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10 "Clean City" Policy

• Develop a "Clean City" policy to beautify the city. There are not enough convenient public garbage cans leading to too much litter. A Clean City Policy would increase and optimize public garbage cans for our residents and for the sake of our image to our visitors.

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11 Better Transit and More Parking

• Free up parking downtown by expanding the park-and-ride system along express bus transit corridors and improving frequency, coverage, and convenience of express bus routes geared to service major employers downtown such as at Kingston Health Science Centre, the University, the City and the OHIP building.

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12 Improve our Non-Tax Revenue Strategies

• There are whole range of non-tax revenue strategies that make up about a third of the City budget. We can increase and further refine these to generate more City revenue which puts downward pressure on taxes. Non-tax revenue strategies with fiscal prudency will protect taxpayers from higher taxes. Additionally, Kingston has grown more in the last four years than at anytime in living memory (4897 new taxable units - almost 3 times the growth of my first term 1728 units and my first term was considered an above average growth term). This increase to the property tax base further puts downward pressure on tax rates.

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