The Financial Case for a Rural Municipality

Originally published on 2 Nov 2014, updated Sept 2026.

North Saanich is at a crossroads. Development pressure presents NS residents with a stark choice: re-commit to our rural-residential and agricultural identity, or continue down the road to urbanization.

Proponents of high-density development claim that more people to “broaden the tax-base” will keep taxes low for all residents. This is not true. Development has proven repeatedly to increase taxes. Rural municipalities typically have lower tax rates than their urbanized neighbours.

The reason for this is simple:  urban densities require urban amenities and infrastructure. When people live in urban areas on small lots, all the activities and recreation that don’t take place on their own property depend on publicly funded infrastructure.  They require roads to go where they need to go, transit to get there, parks in which to walk and play, soccer and baseball fields for their kids, rec centres in which to swim and skate and work out – all paid for by taxes.  Urbanization also needs infrastructure like sewers, sidewalks, gutters and streetlights – that’s why it makes sense to keep urban densities in urban areas like Sidney, where the infrastructure already exists.

A look at Metchosin and Langford, neighbouring municipalities with strikingly different visions, dramatically illustrates the point. Metchosin has elected to remain rural, and enjoys low taxes and small municipal staff costs. Langford has chosen to pursue development, has much higher taxes, and the attendant infrastructure costs.  In fact, with developable land in Langford disappearing, so are the Development Cost Charges that municipalities count on to fund the building of new infrastructure. 

Increasing industry in NS will also bring further pressure on “available” land for more housing. Even if developers bear the initial cost of infrastructure, maintenance and replacement are permanent municipal costs, which is why residents in municipalities like Langford are facing increasing tax bills. 

Much of the industrial development in NS is on ALR land at the airport. With approximately 1/3 of the NS land base in the ALR, residents who value our agricultural resources and food security should be concerned about the recent actions by the BC government that undermine the integrity of the ALR, and the targeting of agricultural land by land speculators.

The whole point of sound regional planning is to emphasize diversity and match land uses to their best potential use and most appropriate locations. The best use of agricultural land, particularly in NS, is agriculture.

Any actions by municipalities to allow development on our rural-agricultural land jeopardize the future of agriculture in NS. As long as land speculators believe that they will be able to subdivide agricultural land, they will buy it, sit on it until it looks unused and perhaps overgrown with brush and blackberries, and then claim that it's not productive agricultural land, so "it’s perfect for development.” This further drives up the price of farmland, making it unattainable to young farmers.

The cornerstone of the NS Official Community Plan is “to retain the present rural, agricultural and marine character of the community”. NS residents face a choice between two opposite visions in this election: urban densities that will lead to loss of farmland and increased taxes; or preservation of a rural-agricultural identity, which, coupled with low taxes, is the jewel that is North Saanich today.

Land and $s

[Originally published in 2022, but still relevant today.]

As usual, housing issues are dragged into the election discussion.  For our municipality, other issues should have a higher priority.   Not to suggest that housing is a not a worthy topic, now more than ever, but as designated in the Regional Growth Strategy, North Saanich's priorities are aligned more with rural and agricultural attributes.

Notwithstanding this clear imperative, we are drawn into the "housing debate" through various arguments, many of them poorly grounded.  Although many residents, and some candidates, offer glib and knee-jerk "solutions" to the housing challenges, almost none offer practical solutions.  Although many claim to support "affordable housing", almost no one explains how it can be achieved.

There are many articles explaining why the "build more" approach will not make housing affordable.  This is especially true in North Saanich, where land prices are very high, probably among the highest in the CRD.  Affordable housing implies that all components of the dwelling be obtained at a lower cost, including the land.

One argument often advanced for reducing the land cost component is "densification."  Again, there is no explanation of how this really works.  If it did work as advertised, we could not draw the following graph.

It plots land prices for each of 20 representative lots in North Saanich against the lot sizes.  The lots range from .074 to 2.5 acres.  The smallest parcels are at Canora Mews, the others are nearby.  The land values are from the 2021 BC Assessment.

Also plotted is the land value per acre which allows us to compare "apples with apples" for properties of widely varying sizes.  The graph is quite revealing:

• although property sizes vary considerably, the land cost for them does not.  That is shown by the almost flat blue line in the graph.  Rural acreages are not enormously more expensive than a cheek by jowl lot, land only.  
• the orange line however, tells us the same thing but more graphically.  The tiny lots at Canora Mews are assessed at about $4.9 million per acre while 1/3 acre lots in Dean Park Estates come in at $1.5 million per acre.

So, it would seem that carving larger properties up into smaller ones does very little to reduce the land cost of the dwelling package.

With this in mind, make sure you ask those candidates who are flogging the "build more" and "build denser" solutions to the housing problem, how they really plan to achieve true affordability.

The Meaning and Value of Rural

Defining Rural

[this excellent letter by a North Saanich resident appeared before the election in 2022 in the Times Colonist]

In some communities when people are planning to move to a rural community, real estate agents will give them a scratch and sniff manure card.  Heads up!  Sometimes it stinks around here. The importance of rural is being hotly debated in the 2022 municipal election for North Saanich.  There are references to the pastoral vistas, the hedgerows, and not much traffic.  And it’s true, rural does mean those things.  But it also means less infrastructure, fewer staff at District Hall, and (consequently) lower taxes. We don’t need streetlights, sidewalks, or Starbucks.  Why?  Because our purpose, as defined by the Regional Growth Strategy, is to grow food and provide green space.  Think back to the height of the pandemic, and the experience of there being not much produce on the grocery shelves.  With the lack of water in California that will almost certainly be a repeat experience.  North Saanich is one of the last areas in the Capital Regional District whose purpose is food production.  Cast your eye south down the Peninsula and what do you see?  Gordon Head used to be farm country, as did Cordova Bay, and parts of Saanich.  But this has been eroded by the slow march of densification.  Neighbourhood nooks, sensitive infills and village centres are all part of the game to connect the urban dots.  In North Saanich our preservation of rural is linked to food security, carbon sequestration, and green space – for the region.   

S. Chandler

Four Urban Planners for a Rural Community?

 Posted to Next Door, 12 Aug 2022, by Spring Harrison in response to another post there:

Rural scenes in North Saanich - Hay fields beside Willingdon Road near the airport and cows grazing in fields beside Tatlow Road. — Nextdoor 

 

Good observation. Which leads to the question, why do we have four urban planners working for a municipality that is, by definition, not urban? Perhaps a rural/agricultural community, as defined by the Regional Growth Strategy, needs an Agrologist, not urban planners. 

The RGS is clear, the Urban Containment Boundary is a line, not a zone. There is no such thing as a hybrid urban/rural entity. They are mutually exclusive as the RGS recognizes. Housing solutions are to go on the urban side, leaving the rural side intact to fill its legitimate functions.  It is disingenuous at best to state that spot increases in housing density throughout the District would not alter the rural character. The RGS says otherwise which is good enough for me. 

If there are housing problems in the area, and there certainly are, perhaps the question should be, are the urban areas within the CRD doing their best job at providing affordable housing? This is their mandate, not ours. 

Is it up to the rural communities to provide solutions where those who have that responsibility have failed? 

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