double the provincial average for rental units
From my personal experience one issue that keeps on cropping up in town council and Planning Advisory Committee meetings is the amount of rentals in Wolfville and the constant push to create more.
The town has municipal planning guidelines and land use bylaws that are the basis for decisionmaking re: developments. However these serve as guidelines only and can be altered by way of development agreements by the town. Things such as the amount of frontage an apartment might need can be lowered for example.
My experience has been that some developments get passed with features that do not meet the guidelines while others don't. Of course this oversimplifies things but the seeming inconsistency of these is what prompts me to think an overall "plan for development" in Wolfville is what is necessary so that any developments outside of the guidelines can be measured against what the overall plan is for the town.
Among other issues it begs a question the townspeople need to answer
Do we need more rental units being developed in the town?
If so what is the best way to achieve this?
if not then why are we allowing the "guidelines" to be altered to accomodate further development?
In response to "Do we need more rental units being developed in the town?"
I'd like to hear direct from Acadia but apparently they have significant dorm vacancies. The question for them would be is it the result of decreasing enrollments i.e. less students or is it the result of a greater percentage wanting to live off-campus as opposed to on-campus or some combination thereof. I will work on gathering those stats.
Looking at Statistics Canada information from the last two census periods, there has been a 4.6 per cent decline in Wolfville's population.
Furthermore the number of rented dwellings outnumber owned dwellings with a whopping 52 per cent of dwellings rented while 48 per cent are owned. That's approximately double the provincial average for Nova Scotia. To be fair we also note that Wolfville is a "university" town so tried some comparisons with towns like Sackville, N.B. and also Antigonish where less than 40 per cent of the dwellings are rentals.
The source for these stats can be found at:
http://www12.statcan.ca/english/profil01/Details/
details1fam.cfm?SEARCH=BEGINS&PSGC=12&SGC=1207024&A=&LANG=
E&Province=12&PlaceName=wolfville&CSDNAME=Wolfville&CMA=
&SEARCH=BEGINS&DataType=1&TypeNameE=Town&ID=2577
In light of this information my question is do we have a shortage or lack of rentals available for people? What is the occupancy rate of apartments off campus? By creating more apartments are we simply creating movement among rental units or actually meeting increased demnand. etc. etc.
Let's get some discussion going on this one. I'd love to hear from developers and landlords on what their experience has been.
Glenn
posted by David A. Daniels @ 1:00 p.m.
5 Comments:
While the % of rental housing comparisons are interesting, especially with other univ. towns, Wolfville is different in my opinion. Wolfville is unique in the size of the university (large) vs the size of the rest of the town (small). This has all kinds of impacts on the town, both in terms of housing demand, but also in terms of the importance of the revenue the town DOESN'T get from property taxes on university property, and the ability to maintain a critical mass of retail operations. That is one reason taxes in town are so high.
It may also be worthwhile looking at rental units/student and I frankly don't know what the results of this would be. Acadia does want more students back on campus but has so far been unable to pull it off.
A bit off topic, perhaps, but relevant to the site. My comments relate to the lack of responsible management of development issues in Wolfville.
Question: Is it a conflict of interest for a major developer, in town, to be on town council?
Everyone I suppose has the right but part of the problem is that whether or not there actually IS a conflict of interest or not - is that there can often be a "perceived" conflict of interest in the public's eye and that is an issue. Same thing goes for relatives, spouses/partners, etc. The question is even if they remove themselves from discussions pertaining to specific items that present conflict (which they do during town council meetings)do they they still have some "influence"? That I don't know. There has certainly been instances where seemingly similar development proposals have not met the same fate but if there is underlying influence at the heart of it it would be very difficult to know. To be fair as well, there are also examples some would say where the town councillor/developer has been seemingly "unpreferentially" treated as well. It is possible that because of the perceived influence that their proposals are scrutinized even more deeply than others but again all difficult to ascertain. What kinds of clear suggestions can we propose to council for discussion to make this process more transparent?
i suspect that if Acadia were to de-couple the meal plan from the cost of a residence room and allow the students to fend for themselves, they would fill the remaining rooms. they may need to put in kitchens and wall-off individual units, but i could see them converting one of the existing buildings someday. unless the food services contract prevents this, but contracts can always be broken (=$$).
My question was posed during at the forum during the recent election. I did not ask it at that time, however, the question was directed towards the Developer. He responded but did not address the question and that was it... there was no more discussion about it. Do the citizens of Wolfville have their heads in the sand or perhaps they don't care about the irresponsible development and 'good old boys' activities on Town Council.
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