View Royal Business Meeting Summary - April 11, 2012

I. Summary of Discussions

• While View Royal is a nice place to live, View Royal is not open for business.
• They would not recommend View Royal to their friends as a place to invest in a business.
• The Town of View Royal is not business friendly:
• The rules affecting business are too onerous – there are too many permits required, permits are more expensive in View Royal than in other communities, its takes too long for the Town’s staff to process permits, and staff are too hard on applicants;
• The Town doesn’t seem to care about how their policies impact business (e.g., the improvements to Island Highway and the upcoming bridge closure);
• The Town’s tax rates are too high
  • The ratio of commercial to residential mill rate is one of the highest in the CRD;
  • Taxes have increased by 50% in the past 5 to 7 years;
  • There was no offset to taxes when business dropped by 25% during construction of the Old Island Highway.
• Those attending the meeting had a number of questions for Council and made suggestions to improve View Royal’s business climate.

II. Recommendations for Making VR More Business Friendly

1. Link business sales to taxes, taxes would only increase if business revenues increased.
2. Figure out where and why the Town’s budget is always increasing. Ask if there are less expensive ways of doing things. Look at what are necessities and what are nice to have. Look at what the town is doing that isn’t part of the Town’s core services... let the public pay for these services if they want them. Don’t create the service and then tax residents.
3. Reduce the complexity of the Town’s processes – to get licenses, approvals to do work on building, -- e.g., forms, requirements for various reports (engineering, arborist, environmental, etc.). it was noted that a lot of town policies cost business extra and discourage business investments.
4. Town should reduce its costs by becoming more efficient, thereby reducing the tax impact on business - less paper, fewer reports.
5. Look for way to ‘encourage’ owners of underdeveloped commercial properties to develop. Options include shifting tax component from 50% for Building and 50% for land to a higher % for land. In so doing you are giving a bonus to those who fully develop their commercial land, as they aren’t penalized for building a nice building as most of the tax impact is on the land. For individuals with underdeveloped commercial property this would encourage them to build something that will generate higher revenue. Another option is to pre-zone properties to what the town wants and so the property owner and the purchaser of the property know just what they will be able to build, they won’t have to go through an arduous and confrontational rezoning process
6. Reduce the ratio of business tax to property tax, which is now one of the highest in the CRD.
7. Reduce the red-tape and time it taxes for someone to develop their property – if the town can decrease the time it takes to rezone and develop, the developer saves a lot of money... this would be an incentive to build in VR. Right now VR is viewed by the builders/developers as being unfriendly and difficult to get things through. Processes can be simplified, look at Langford.
8. If the town wants to attract business, it needs to make investors feel they are wanted and the rules are fair. For larger pieces of land, rezone and offer a tax holiday for 5 years to encourage development – try to be creative.
9. Send staff off to Langford to find out how they have made business welcome and encouraged them to come

III. Meeting Notes

The WineMaker

• Owns the property
• Been in VR 14 years
• Paying $14k per year in taxes
• Lives in Saanich Road
  • 25% reduction in his business during construction
  • no adjustment in taxes for the slowdown to their business
  • his property assessment went up because of the road improvements but his business is still down
  • QUESTION:
    1. Did the property values of homes and business along the Island Highway Improvement Project (IHIP) also go up? In the same proportion as his property?
    2. Why didn’t property values decrease during construction?
    3. Why didn’t VR asked the assessment authority to adjust property values of business during construction?

ADMIRALS WALK:

• Business down 25% there since road work and hasn’t picked up.
• General belief that VR not competitive with other municipalities in terms of ration of residential to business tax rate, cost of permits (e.g., it was noted that Sidney charges $50 for some permits while VR changes $400) Dollar Store – rent is $10k/month, not getting enough business so had to close
• there are a large number of closed stores, it is getting worse – dollar store. As business owners are renters, many are at a point where they aren’t making much money and some will reach a point where they can make any money and leave.
• Questions:
  1. Ask Ken Featherby about what has happened in Admirals Walk due to road work. Has business picked up? What about their assessment during and after IHIP?
  2. How does VR compare to other municipalities tax ratio, permit costs, DCCs?

Four Mile

• Pays $60k per year in property taxes
• Business is down, revenue down
• Utilities increased (Gas/hydro/sewer/water)
• VR looks bad to business in terms of:
  • Tax ratio
  • Cost of services (e.g., permit fees higher than in other municipalities)
  • Time to get a permit (way longer than other municipalities)
  • its costs to business
  • Its response to residents – for example, the new phone system that wasn’t working, confusing to use and hard to figure out who to talk to. Colwood has a sit with all staff listed with their contact information. VR doesn’t seem to respond to calls very readily
  • its apathetic to the conditions of business

General - Staffing

• Most VR business have had to cut their costs, this includes their staff – both in terms of salaries and numbers of staff
• There is concern about the VR staff and costs – the numbers of have increased greatly, salaries have continued to increase while in other sectors they have been frozen or reduced, overall staffing costs have greatly increased.
• Town need to look for way of doing things more economically, and reducing costs Question:
  1. How does VR compare to other municipalities in terms of: a. the number of staff per population b. staff costs per VR population c. staff costs as a percent of town’s budget.
  2. Can the town use other ways of getting work done, such as Williams Head inmates; volunteers; students from schools;

GENERAL, BUSINESS ISSUES

• In general, VR is a great place to live. Lots works well. It is attractive. Nice homes, attractive streetscapes. Good people. However, it is getting more and more expensive to live here and to operate a business here.
• There seems to be an attitude by residents that businesses have lots of money and they can pay whatever rate of taxes they are charged
• Some members of Council don’t seem interested in attracting business, view is VR is a bedroom community
• Town needs more business, as they generate more tax revenue. Residential development costs the town more to maintain than it gets for taxes
• Town should be doing something to attract business, right now there is a perception that VR is not business friendly and is not a good place to invest – unlike Langford, VR is not ‘open for business’
• While business can write off taxes as a business expense, they noted they are only able to save $0.17 for every $1 of taxes (17%)
• Over the past number of years property taxes have increased by 50% while their revenues have actually decreased.
• 80% of Canada’s income is being generated by small business but they are only getting 20%

Separate Discussion With Business Owner

• Bridge:
  • Desperate to reduce impact of bridge
  • Worried that time to build bridge may be extended past 6
  • Island Highway Project had a huge impact on business; an estimated 25%, they expect the closing of the bridge to have a similar impact
  • Could a temporary car bridge also go in as well as a foot-bridge
  • Concerns that:
    • Proper traffic impact study has not been done before making plans to close the bridge
    • An arched bridge will take longer to build than a stringer bridge
    • While it may take longer to keep 2 lanes open, it would be less of a financial impact on business.
• Traffic flow
  • there are 18,000 vehicles a day going through the intersection (Admirals and Island Highway)
  • at present, between 3:00 to 5:00 very few cars coming into the shopping centres
  • with all the traffic on the road during rush-hour there is (gridlock) – the impact is no one will be coming into their shopping centre as they will be worried about how long it will take them to get back into the flow of traffic
  • the Base eliminating staggering shifts and the end of the Blue Boat will make things even worse. Council should take a delegation to the base (business owners, MLA, MP, Police and Councils – VR, Saanich and Esquimalt) to make a case for the Base working with the municipalities to improve things.
  • By making it harder for individuals to access the shopping centres, View Royal is creating an incentive for customers to go elsewhere
• Council Doesn’t seem to care about Business
  • A letter was sent to Council (signed by most of the business owners of Admirals walk) re their concerns about what the bridge will do to their business. All Council did was provide an acknowledgement of receiving the letter; Council did not address their concerns.
• General Views of View Royal as a place to operate a business
  • He is sorry he opened up his business 15 years ago
  • Would recommend to his friends that they not set up a business in View Royal
  • Wonder if things would be different if a member of Council had a business