The city will not be assuming ownership or providing maintenance of infrastructure elements for privately-owned condominiums in Orillia.
Members of the Common Elements Condominium Working Group (CECWG), claiming an unfair taxation system, asked the city to assume responsibility and provide maintenance for the services within their developments.
Essentially, the residents living in those condos say they pay the same residential taxes as homeowners but also have to play fees for the ‘common elements’ that include things such as street clearing, garbage collection and other services typically covered by property taxes.
But Ian Sugden, the city’s director of development services and engineering, said such a move would cost the city more than $1 million and, as a “result of the scale, scope and complexity” of the issues, such a move was not recommended.
At a recent council committee meeting, Sugden provided some local and provincial context to the issue.
He said in Orillia, there are more than 11,000 properties of all types ranging from residential to commercial and industrial.
In the mix are 14 common elements condominiums which include about 580 individual dwelling units. There are an additional 17 ‘standard plans of condominiums’ that are horizontally built, such as Coventry Court on West Street, or vertically built, such as Panoramic Point. In all, they include about 518 dwelling units.
Sugden cited statistics from the Condo Authority of Ontario, which reports there are about 800,000 condo units in the province, representing about 1.6 million residents.
“It’s estimated 60% of all new homes being built in Ontario are condos,” Sugden noted.
“It seems it’s a very popular form of development, it’s a legal form of development in Ontario … it seems to be problematic in Orillia,” said Sugden. “I can’t find other examples of the types of concerns, outside of Orillia, that the other 1.6 million people living in condos are experiencing.”
Sugden said some members of the working group are concerned that “the private ownership of services within the common elements may not be sustainable in the long term, that their condo boards may not fully understand what they’ve purchased and they believe because they pay the same tax on a per-assessment basis as non-condo owners, that there’s an unfair treatment and therefore to make if fair, municipalities should assume the services.”
According to Sugden, “the complexities of that, retroactively, for existing condo developments, are massive. I can’t understate it,” he said.
“Those corporations have been created through various complex Planning Act processes. It’s a form of ownership that would have to be undone and a new form of ownership created,” Sugden explained.
“Because each individual owner has a share of somebody else’s stuff, all owners have to agree to any change in ownership,” Sugden explained. “One person can’t dissent ... Every decision affects all owners.”
That’s why city staff suggested maintaining the status quo. City council agreed.
They also agreed with staff that, as requested by the working group, new measures will be introduced to ensure condominium purchasers are better informed about the intricacies of condo ownership, common elements and other issues when they are buying the unit.
However, Sugden said even those measures are limited to some new developments - not existing ones.
Sudgen explained that about 50% of condo applications the city deal with are “draft plan of approval applications, meaning those are the ones in the legislation we can impose conditions on.”
For those applications, the city can force the developers to better inform the buyers what they are purchasing.
However, the other half of condos are created via what’s termed a ‘condo exemption.’ In these cases, developers have gone through another process - such as a zoning amendment or site plan application - en route to approval.
In these instances, the use of the land is not being changed - just the ownership type. As a result, the city is unable to impose any conditions.
While the group has been formally dissolved, city politicians said the municipality will continue to help the group if it requires information.
And while most admired the group’s passion, the mayor, among others, felt they were barking up the wrong tree.
Steve Clarke said he appreciated the passion of the working group’s leader, Scott Maclagan, who has been championing this cause for about three years.
The mayor says he has “sincere appreciation for the effort this group” has made, although he said he doesn’t agree with all their contentions.
“There are a number of us around the table and in city hall and other municipalities who are trying to understand why this isn’t being dealt with at the provincial level,” said Clarke. “It was the province that brought this legislation in in the 1990s, that enabled an alternate type (of development). Only the province can truly affect change.”
The mayor said he had met recently with Simcoe North MPP Jill Dunlop and said he was willing to broker a meeting with her, group members and officials from the province.
Maclagan said he has no intention of backing down in his campaign for taxation fairness.
He sent an email to council after this week’s decision, thanking them for their “continued support of our quest to achieve fair and equitable taxation and the receipt of full municipal services.”
Maclagan said the group “recognized long ago that our issue can only be resolved finally at the provincial level, but were advised that we had to start at the local municipal level to determine the facts and gain recognition of our concerns, then go to the province.”
He said the group has been in touch “many times” with Dunlop.
“Our CEC Committee, including members from horizontally built standard condominiums who have the same problem with ‘private roadways and underground infrastructure,’ will prepare a comprehensive report over the next few months for presentation to council and ultimately the appropriate provincial officials.”
