City of Thunder Bay aims to boost growth with new plan, reorganization

The City of Thunder Bay is taking a number of steps to increase growth, including reorganizing city administrationand creating a new task force.

In a presentation to city council on Monday, City Manager John Collin said Thunder Bay is not seeing enough growth to keep up with demand.

"The more population you get ...the more businesses are attracted to a community," Collin said. "The more businesses you get, the more they attract labour to your community and therefore back to population."

"If we take a look at, first of all, population, and use the two formal measuring points of the census of 2016 and 2021, the city of Thunder Bay only grew by 1.3 per centduring that time frame," he said. "The Ontario average during the same time frame was 5.8 per cent,and the national average was 5.2 per cent,four times the growth rate in Thunder Bay."

The only census metropolitan in Canada that had a lower growth rate than Thunder Bay during that time period, Collin said, was Red Deer, Alta.

Regarding Thunder Bay's tax base, Collin said it's grown .63 per cent on average over the last 10 yearsand the growth rate was just .44 per cent during the last four years.

"We have grown at a rate fourtimes less than inflation by any measure," Collin said. "What that means is a city's purchasing power has significantly decreased in each of the last 10 years,and that has resulted in tax and user rate increases above inflation, and services have gradually diminished.

"This needs to be addressed."

Collin highlighted a number of measuresthe city is already taking to increase that growth, including building more homes with the assistance of the federal Housing Accelerator Fundand the provincial Building Faster Fund.

"I can tell you that both are success stories," Collin said. "At this point in time, the action plan associated with two those two different funds is approximately 75 per cent complete.

"The action plan is much more than just grants," he said. "It includes community improvement plans, changes to restrictive zoning, funding for affordable housing, review of our internal processes and of course the various grants. We are doing well in terms of production.

"Our building permits to the end of September this year were 310 residential properties. Last year at the same time, it was 201. So we have increased by approximately one-third compared to last year. More importantly, in terms of our requirements for the Building Faster fund at the provincial level, we know we will hit our targets for 2024, which means the funding for 2025 is assured."

The city has not met its targets for the Housing Accelerator Fund yet, Collin said, but "we are making good progress."

"An interesting point is that our own housing study states that we need to produce approximately 350 units per yearif we want to be able to sustain a high growth rate. This year we're at 301 and counting, so we're getting very close to an acceptable production rate to satisfy our growth requirements."

Growth department

But more initiatives are coming. On Nov. 4, a new reorganization of city administration will go into effect, which will see the creation of a "growth department."

That department will be overseen by Kerri Marshall, who's currently the general manager of infrastructure, development, and operations, and will include the city's development services and strategic initiatives and engagement divisions.

Further, Collin said, work will begin on the creation of a new city growth plan, which will be handled by a growth task force.

"It's not growth at any cost," he said. "It is smart growth to make sure we have the housing, the talent, the services, the recreation and sports that are needed so that everybody enjoys the community in which they're in.

"To create that smart growth plan with all of the various players that will be involved, we are going to be creating what we call Task Force Growth. It will be a combination of municipal administrative staff, all of the key stakeholders such as the [Community Economic Development Commission], the [Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce], the BIAs and others, academia, and many others including youth representation or young adult representation in order to sit down, roll up their sleeves and help inform that smart growth plan."

CBC contacted Collin for commentbut he's out of the office until next week.

A video of his presentation can be viewed on the city's website (the presentation starts at about the six-minute mark).

'Tough decisions' for council

McKellar Ward Coun. Brian Hamilton said the city needs an "all-hands-on-deck" approach to growth.

"We need the chamber, we needsmall, medium and large sized businesses, and we need the industrial sector to take note that Thunder Bay is a great place to do business where we have so many great advantages," he said. "There's so many great advantages to work and set up shop here in Thunder Bay, and we've really got to amplify that message through supporting ourexisting businesses as well as the incoming businesses."

Hamilton said the city's current, stagnant, rate of growth has led to council having to make some "tough decisions."

Some of those decisions actually affect economic growth potentially, because ultimately we need to keep Thunder Bay affordable for residents, and to maintain an attractive option for commercial enterprise wanting to set up here," he said.

"We've had to make some really tough choices, and we're kind of nearingthe end of what we could reasonably do.

"Thunder Bay needs to maintain a certain level of amenities and services that people not only enjoy, but actually encourage people to move and set up businesses here, so we're kind of we're kind of against the wall in that regard," Hamilton said. "The big takeaway for me, though, from this growth strategy, is that everything that we do from here on until we get firing on all cylinders will be in collaboration with the business community, and with that lens on economic development.

"So if we want to keep, maintain Thunder based affordability, we really ultimately have to continue to grow that tax base, support commercial and large industrial enterprise, and maintaina strong workforce."