Growth creating big headaches in Waterdown
September 19, 2005

Taxpayers may be facing a big road construction bill as transportation planners and residents grapple with the consequences of a massive residential expansion in Waterdown. A particular flash point is the proposed widening of Waterdown Road, most of which lies outside Hamilton's borders.

Historically the issue originates with three new subdivisions on prime agricultural land that will add 6500 houses and more than double the current population of Waterdown. The growth plans were approved by Flamborough council in 1992 - but that council was almost entirely replaced in 1994. The latter council took issue with the sprawl, but it was overruled in 2002 by the Ontario Municipal Board which approved the subdivisions and also ordered the creation of a transportation plan to accommodate the expansion.

Map of Waterdown / Aldershot Transportation Master Plan Study Area. Photo from draft plan study.

It is expected that nearly all the new residents will join the daily commute to Burlington and other parts of the greater Toronto area - a trek already made by the vast majority of Waterdown's workforce.

Less than a quarter currently work inside their community. The town has no industrial employment to speak of, and most of its "prestige industrial park" at Clappison's Corners has now been allocated to big box stores.

That has left transportation planners scrambling to find ways to handle the expected crush of commuters. The draft Waterdown-Aldershot Transportation Master Plan released at the end of last week includes a proposal to widen Waterdown Road to four lanes from the downtown of Waterdown to the QEW.

That scheme has angered many existing residents, some of whom will see their homes expropriated for the roadway expansion. But it also threatens to impose a major financial burden on all the taxpayers of Hamilton who may have to pick up a bill usually borne primarily by development charges.

The draft plan predicts $47.9 million in road improvement costs and estimates that $44.9 million of that can be "allocated" to development charges. But the section titled "cost allocation by municipality" has only one sentence: "This section is still under development."

Behind that sentence is the reality that nearly all Waterdown Road lies within the City of Burlington, and provincial law forbids using development charges to pay for services outside the borders of the collecting municipality. Hamilton officials are hoping that Burlington will cover a significant part of the $13.1 million for this part of the project, but this appears unlikely.

Flamborough councillor Dave Braden warned his colleagues about this last June when he was the sole opponent to a council resolution to endorse the preferred options in the draft plan. "To endorse this means that we're going to have to - in the new City of Hamilton - find $10 million to spend on a road outside our boundary - and, politically, that's a little hard to take."

Braden called the decision "premature" and "very hard to reverse". He argued that "the reason we're being pushed to endorse it, is that the bulldozers [of the housing developers] are champing at the bit, and they want to get out of the gate right now."

Waterdown councillor Margaret McCarthy maintained the financing could be discussed later and voted in support of endorsing the plan. "If I could stop this development, I'd be the first standing in front of that truck," she declared. I don't need it. It's a big headache. It's more aggravation than it's worth." But given the OMB approval and instructions, McCarthy felt the council had to move forward.

The debate led Mayor Di Ianni to ask for assurances about the project financing. Project manager Mary Lou Tanner replied that the decision "doesn't tie us to any dollar figure for any improvements in the City of Burlington, but we are tied by the Cabinet decision to negotiate that cost-sharing agreement."

There is also no guarantee that development charges will cover the costs of the other parts of the project. The development charges bylaw will have to be re-opened, and the developers could argue that much of the road expansion costs should be borne by the existing population.

The theory of suburban growth is that new houses pay for themselves - that development charges collected from the builders of each new unit should cover the costs of servicing the growth, including water and sewer pipes, roads and other infrastructure, plus 'soft service' expansions such as fire, ambulance, police and libraries.

The draft plan calls for new transit service to Waterdown from both Hamilton and Halton, but not before 2015. The HSR portion could provide about 50 hours of service per week on a single loop within Waterdown that also connected to the Aldershot GO station.

The draft plan is at http://www.myhamilton.ca/myhamilton/CityandGovernment/CityDepartments
/PublicWorks/CapitalPlanning/WaterdownAldershotTMP/.

The June discussion at city council is transcribed on the CATCH website at http://hamiltoncatch.org/council/council_050629b.htm.