SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A key plank in Mayor Mark Heyck's election bid last fall was shot down by city council Monday night, a majority of whom were skeptical of offering low-interest loans to residents to energy retrofit their homes.
Kate Thomson, a program assistant with the Arctic Energy Alliance in 2012, shows off the organization's wood pellet stove. A motion calling for legislative changes to allow the city to offer cheap loans for energy retrofits was defeated by council Monday night. - NNSL file photo |
Council was presented with a motion to be sent to the NWT Association of Communities general meeting May 9-12, calling on the territorial government to revise its Cities, Towns and Villages Act to allow municipalities to include green retrofits as an acceptable application for local improvement charges, which the city contends may not be allowable under the current version of the legislation because it is geared more toward community-based projects and not individual homeowners.
One local improvement charge already in the works in Yellowknife is the one Northland Trailer Park residents agreed to last year. They are paying $358 a month over 25 years to cover the $15.7 million needed to pay for water and sewer line upgrades.
The motion was defeated 4-3 Monday night, however, after councillors questioned the wisdom of the city handing out long-term loans to individual homeowners.
"I'm open to it really, depending on the financial risk," said city councillor Adrian Bell, a local real estate agent. "But there is a risk here to taxpayers. The people who are in support of this are making it seem like it is a simple fact, a no-brainer. It is certainly not. The GNWT writes off bad debts to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. So are we going to be doing that?"
Bell said he wants to avoid creating something similar in the city to the GNWT's Business Development and Investment Corporation, which has more experience assessing risk and dealing with defaulted payments.
Coun. Niels Konge, who owns a construction firm called the local improvement charge scheme a "tax," arguing council really ought to be spending their efforts on helping residents find cheaper sources of energy.
"When I was running, I mentioned we should look at nuclear power and there are lots of mini-configurations that companies are coming up with now," he said.
"We are talking power for less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour and we are paying 30. So if you want to save everybody money, that is the way to do it. Not give Joe Blow Homeowner a cheap interest loan to do renovations on his house."
Also voting against the motion were Couns. Phil Moon Son and Linda Bussey. Heyck was out of town and not present at the meeting; Coun. Cory Vanthuyne was seated in the mayor's chair during his absence.
The three councillors who voted in favour of the motion, Couns. Bob Brooks, Rebecca Alty and Dan Wong, argued the local improvement charge would allow more residents to retrofit their homes, and would ultimately reduce their home heating costs through energy savings. They also downplayed the risks to the city.
"Somebody came up with a concept that if we did a retrofit program through a lot improvement charge, it would be no cost to the city and would make money available to the residents to do energy retrofits on their building," said Brooks. "It would not only increase value on their house, it would lower their cost of living in regards to energy costs."
Energy savings from the retrofits, he argued, could then go to paying for the local improvement charges.
Brooks said the risks to the city would be minimal - the same if someone was delinquent on their tax bill. After a couple of years of not paying up, the city would seek to recover the costs, even if it led to homeowners being forced to sell their homes.
