The 2% Tewin Tax and 1% Lansdowne Tax: the Price You Pay for Developer Sweetheart Deals
Our tax dollars are subsidizing wealthy developers rather than improving our local communities.
There’s a simple reason why your municipal taxes keep going up while crumbling sidewalks, aging arenas, and neglected community projects get left behind.
It’s because City Hall is using your tax dollars to hand out developer sweetheart deals.
Two proposals currently before Council would consume the next 3% of property tax increases:
Lansdowne would cost the equivalent of a 1% property tax increase — at least for the next decade, and probably longer.
Tewin would cost the equivalent of a 2% property tax increase — forever.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has focused on keeping your annual tax increases to 4% or less. Inflation alone eats up most of that increase. If the remainder is used to subsidize wealthy developers, there’s precious little to reinvest in communities.
The inconvenient math
2% Tewin tax
It will cost $600 million upfront to run water pipes across the greenbelt to the proposed Tewin community. Some of this money, the city would get back through development charge. But on top of that, Tewin will amount to a long-term 2% tax increase for everyone in the city.
That 2% increase comes from the costs that all taxpayers subsidize for a new sub-division far from the city centre, as computed by the City’s advisors, Hemson Consulting.
The City asked Hemson to compute the cost of growth, i.e., how much a new home generates in tax revenue versus how much it consumes in city services and upkeep for new infrastructure.
Hemson found that in sub-divisions built at the edge of town, each new home costs more than it collects in revenue, requiring a subsidy of $465 per person per year. With an average household size of 2.2 people, this means that taxpayers across the city have to provide a subsidy of $1,023 per home per year in these greenfield developments. (Hemson also found that infill building netted the city a surplus of $606 per person per year.)
Tewin is supposed to grow to a community of 40,000 homes. This means that, when completed, taxpayers across the city will be subsidizing new Tewin homes to the tune of about $43 million per year.
$20 million is the amount we get from a 1% property tax increase, and accordingly, the subsidy that we all pay for Tewin would be equivalent to a 2% property tax increase.
1% Lansdowne tax
Some City Councillors take exception to me characterizing Lansdowne as a 1% tax increase. Even the Ottawa Citizen’s Randall Denley gets prickly about that claim.
But here are the simple facts. Taxpayers will borrow about $22 million a year to pay for Lansdowne and its associated underground parking. (The City claims it will spend $16 million on debt servicing, but I argue this is not the correct estimate.) Against that $22 million, Lansdowne has some $1.6 million in annual revenues that it can count on. It has other aspirational revenue streams, although those have not materialized in the past. Taxpayers could easily be on the hook for $20 million a year with Lansdowne. And remember, $20 million is the amount we get from a 1% property tax increase.
Recently, I did a 10-minute explainer video to walk through the Lansdowne numbers line by line. Watch that video to see in detail the inconvenient math that the City does not want you to know.
I’ve also argued that I believe the City is pushing Lansdowne, not to fix a broken sports facility, but to fix a broken business model. The Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group is bleeding money on Lansdowne, and the opportunity for one lucky developer to build luxury towers onsite, through demolishing and rebuilding the site, could be a way to reduce the sting of loses.
If that’s right, then Lansdowne is worse than just a developer sweetheart deal; it’s using your tax dollars for corporate welfare to some of the richest men in the city.
Make ‘developer sweetheart deals’ the municipal ballot question
The City will be holding a by-election on June 16 for the Osgoode ward councillor position left vacant by George Darouze.
The ballot question for Osgoode in 2025, and for the entire city in 2026, should be whether we use our limited fiscal space to fund priority investments in the community or to fund developer sweetheart deals.
Mark Sutcliffe wants to spend the next 3% of property tax increases on Lansdowne and Tewin. And he’s counting on the fact that you are not paying attention.
We’re paying attention. And we’re getting the word out across the city.
If Sutcliffe and other council members want to support the 2% Tewin tax and the 1% Lansdowne tax, I hope they will be ready to explain to constituents why they voted to subsidize wealthy developers over the priorities of local communities.
(To join up with others in the community pushing back against Lansdowne and Tewin, sign up for my elite top-secret Tiger Team.)
The 2% Tewin Tax and 1% Lansdowne Scam
In Ottawa’s halls where the deals are spun,
Developers feast while the taxpayers run.
A city of promise, yet crumbling still,
As Sutcliffe bends to the rich man’s will.
A pipe to Tewin, a tower at Lansdowne,
Paid by the people, while fortunes are crowned.
A tax on the many, a gift to the few,
They waste our cash and leave us the due.
Two percent gone, to pipe dreams so vast,
A future of debt, a shadow now cast.
Forty thousand homes, yet no one sees,
The subsidy drowning our libraries and trees.
One percent more for Lansdowne’s greed,
A playground for wealth, while communities bleed.
They tear it down to build anew,
With your own money, they swindle you.
Yet one man stands, with numbers in hand,
Neil Saravannamuttoo speaks the truth, they won’t understand.
He maps the scheme, he names the cost,
The price we pay, the dreams we've lost.
So hear him well, before it’s too late,
Before your taxes seal your fate.
Will you bow to Sutcliffe and his cronies?
Or take back Ottawa and show your cajones?
We are heading into a recession. We cannot afford to start these major projects when we haven’t yet completed many others. Lansdowne always was a developers ploy with the taxpayers paying the bills. We were better off with the old exhibition grounds🤬.
As far as building a new subdivision, all costs should be the responsibility of the developer. Even with that Ottawa taxpayers will subsidize that growth as buyers will use existing roads and transport to get downtown now that the govt will no longer allow remote work🤬