Councillors say inventory of City-owned land could be an asset in guiding future development
Two Fernie city councillors are advocating for an inventory of municipally-owned land, to help address gaps in strategic planning and plan for future development.
Councillors Tracey Audia-Kelly and Harsh Ramadass would like to see the City develop a comprehensive inventory of the land that it owns, with investigations into monetary value and the best uses for these properties.
Audia-Kelly said part of the impetus to get this idea started is to find ways of generating revenue that won’t pull from taxpayers pockets, by finding more opportunities to attract development and public and privet partnerships, and unlock more opportunities for housing, that are currently overlooked.
“I think having a land inventory and a strategy is kind of key to ‘what’ll we look like in the future?'” she said.
“How do we support our future if we want to attract economic diversity in our community?” she added. “Not all jobs pay $100,000 per year. How do we keep folks being able to live here comfortably? How does that happen if taxes keep going up and there’s no other alternative? How to seniors age in place if they’re on a fixed income? I think we have to start looking at other options and looking outside the box.”
Ramadass said an inventory could help the City plan better for and monetize development, and diversify the tax base.
“We don’t have a diverse tax base. Our tax base is pretty uniform, in the sense it’s the single detached family homes. That’s the majority of tax revenue generated for us,” he said. “As the costs keep going up, the only resource that we have is to keep counting up the taxes for our residents. We need to come up with something that can mitigate that issue.”
Audia-Kelly said council has talked about this idea and agreed to continue discussion on it, but no formal motion has been put on the table. She would like to see council make a resolution on it or add it to the Strategic Plan or Official Community Plan, as discussion on renewal of the latter is coming up in the next month or so.
She said a land inventory was recommended by a former councillor and an organization review completed by consultants many years ago, but to her knowledge, has never been actioned.
Ramadass said he first became aware of the the need to properly evaluate the value of City-owned land two years ago, when council considered selling Max Turyk Community Centre to the local French language school board, to provide Francophone school École Sophie Morigeau with a permanent home. When the City sought an appraisal of the building and its land, they were presented with very different numbers.
“During that process, we realized that we had evaluator A and evaluator B, and neither came to the same number. They were 80 per cent off from each other,” he noted.
Ramadass thinks council does not currently have a comprehensive picture of all its land assets and what they are worth.
“I feel like we don’t know enough. I would like to take a deeper dive into that and know what we’ve got. Get community feedback and see where we can take it,” he said.
