The Goldilocks Problem Behind City Taxes

0:00Hello and welcome to Bottom Up Shorts where we take a look within the Strong Tows movement at individuals that are taking action in their community in order to create places that are safer, more livable, more inviting, and also have a core financial base for lasting prosperity. And someone that really comes to mind in terms of striving for all of those things is Nathan Harlick. Nathan is a resident of Calgary, Alberta. He is on their planning commission and is a member of Strong Tows and has been for many years, but is also one of the leaders of Strong Tows Calgary, a local conversation group that is helping to shift and improve the conversations taking place about the lasting prosperity of Calgary as well as the opportunities that are ahead. And so Nathan, welcome to Bottom Up Shorts. Now, you are also, I forgot to introduce this element of it. You are at the top of the leader board in the Strong Tows Commons, which is a particularly

1:03special place for Strong Tows members to be able to connect together, have discussions and share insights and pass those things along. But you also have a really important responsibility as a planning commissioner to be able to think carefully and long over a long term about many of the decisions that are being made about the built environment. You want to share about that work as a planning commissioner in some of the ways in which being a Strong Tows advocate has actually sort of woven its way into some of the questions you ask as well as the ways in which you lead those discussions. Sure. So, I've been on the planning commission since 2021. It's an appointed role. It's not elected. Our job, planning commissions depend very by city to city. In Calgary, it's a technical review board. It's largely industry-based. There are, I'm in my fifth year, so I will be done by the end of 2027. And most of the time what we do is review individual applications.

2:04Typically, it's a land use change. Somebody wants to make a change to what they can do. And here's the application. So administration looks at it. They recommend whether we approve it or refuse it. And then we make our own recommendation, then it goes to council. They are the ultimate deciders of what happens with land uses. We are commissioned. We're authorized to approve outline plans, so where the roads are in new neighborhoods, and also specific development permits. So for example, a couple of years ago, we got to approve or review the arena that's being built for the flames. So we spent a couple of weeks reviewing that one and then spent three hours discussing it in a public meeting. And then I think the most interesting part is when we get to deal with policy discussions. Unlike some places, we can have closed meetings and we can sit down and say, here's a proposal that's coming in. There's talk of doing this sort of a policy change.

3:06What would that look like? What would be the advantages, the disadvantages? And that's certainly those that I find those are the most interesting parts. The applications are the price to pay to be involved in those policy discussions. And within that context, I think one of the things that stands out in your work, especially the two articles that you wrote for Strong Towns of Wilego on how to do the math for non-math majors, what's your first piece, and then doing the math and Calgary in particular, is around the question of productive land uses and making it possible for more land within the community to be used more intensively. Not just because it needs to be built up, but actually because it needs to be put to much more productive uses. Do you want to share how that sort of work on figuring out what is the ratio of private to public investment in our community, also factors into the really important decisions that are made around land use and creating opportunities for housing? I think I came in and was very excited about that sort of discussion. And sent an email off to an applicant at least, pretty early on, and got the response

4:09of, no, that's already been dealt with. Typically when the new neighborhood comes in, it's counsel that decides that financial discussion. But it has been useful a couple of times. There was one proposal a few years ago to add an LRT station along an existing LRT line, sort of an industrial commercial area and one land owner. And so we got to talk about real numbers in that case. And in that case, I got to ask, well, how much infrastructure would you have to spend to build a new station and then run it and how much private investment would follow with that? Their numbers ultimately were 32 to 1, 32 times as much private investment as infrastructure, which compared to our now 2.9 to 1 in Calgary. That would be pretty good. I mean, even if they, it turned out infrastructure costs twice as much and they built half as much stuff, that would bring it down to what, 8 to 1, which is much better than our just

5:14under 3. So there have been cases where that has been helpful. But most of the time I find myself turning back to something that John Reuter suggested a couple of years ago where he talked about how to know when the name bees are right and how to know, like, picture, who would actually use this and who have we heard from in the discussions? Is it the same people who have been heard from for the last 30 years? Then maybe take that with a grain of salt, although I'll admit, sometimes it's not just are the neighbors right or wrong. Sometimes it is administration right. Have they made some mistakes or things that I think don't align with good practices for solid financial resilience? When the way that you put it in your intro and the comments is, I'm a stay at home dad who loves his town even when it's infuriating. I do want to shed light on just sort of part of your story and what has sort of given you

6:15this, this platform, but also this responsibility where you live. But happily, about 10 years ago, I looked around and said, you know, I have a little bit of time in the evening and I joined my community association, so neighborhood group and ended up being the traffic transportation person for a little bit and then the planning person. And I mean, I don't remember if that's when I stumbled on strong towns or if that was which came first. I like to think of myself as landing in that missing middle group in between the founders and the not just bikes people who not only arrived all at the same time. So probably about 2017, I stumbled on strong towns and went, oh, okay, this explains a lot of things. This explains why things are falling apart in the neighborhood and why we never have enough money to do the things that we would like. And also explained well enough that I could talk to residents and talk to staff from the

7:15city and almost anybody else in a way that made sense and could also raise some useful questions. Do we have we built a city that we can't afford and if so, then what? And strong towns, Calgary has been trying to help adjust sort of expectations, re-align mindsets. Do you want to share just some of that work that being a local conversation leader has meant for you, but also some of the ways in which you I think maybe this might be in the suggestion sort of the wisdom giving opportunity is around navigating where you have a prominent public responsibility as a planning commissioner, but you also know that like the public also needs what strong towns, Calgary can provide. And so how do you navigate that and you share just a little bit about helping and equipping some of your coal leaders to really be the front of strong towns, Calgary? Sure. I have been reluctant to get too involved in leading a strong towns, Calgary, but I'll admit the second time our feeder main broke in two years, which was just a few months ago.

8:17I said, you know, I should probably get more involved with this. It's a good group. We've been doing a bunch of activities. You came out, spoke to Calgaryans a few years ago. We did the the finance decoder and then there was an election last year and we passed on copies of Michelle Durant Woods. You'll pay for this book to everybody who was elected have tried to communicate that. There are moments where I will speak for myself in public settings. I have raised the the finance decoder in the past and then one of the counselors talked to the finance team and they added those indicators to the annual financial report, which I think was sure it's one page in a 150 sum odd page document, but I think that's some some degree of success and it means that we also can look at those numbers and show we're not we're not wrong on that. I think it's been helpful to remember no one can do this alone and we need lots of people

9:20to get involved and so having other people be involved is good and encouraging them to step up. In the last year, somebody came along and said, I've just recently retired and I'm looking for something to do with, you know, what should I do that would be useful and it's been really great to be able to say, you are experienced and you when you show up in a public meeting and say, hi, I used to work in oil and gas. That gets people's attention in Calgary. People listen and so we need a bunch of different people. It can't just be people like me. Yeah, well, and it's it's about that like coach. There's an element of coaching people to come off the sidelines in a way that they don't feel like they then got smoked by a MAC truck, but instead that it is like there's a graduated sort of process. I don't know if you've ever tried rock climbing, but it's sort of like assuring people, I've got you on belay. Like you will, you won't plummet. And yeah, there's that like nervousness. That's like, this is this is newer uncharted territory. I think that's where the local conversation is such a key part of normalizing our participation

10:24in just civic activities that otherwise feel like either really alienating or they just become so useful because that's the where you go to oppose things. And so it's about like how do we create a real hunger and an interest in doing things that are really good? And I mean, Calgary to its credit for those that are less familiar with Calgary, the defining image of Calgary is just it sprawling out into the hinterlands. And for the first time I believe last year was that the city of Calgary had more building activity take place within the core of the community or sort of within sort of the inner rings than at the outskirts. And that was a step in the right direction. There've been some regressions and other policy changes that I think are going to make it a little bit harder to continue to build on that. But at least that dam is being sort of breached in important ways or you know, if you think of how does an avalanche form, sometimes it actually is just that last little snowflake that lands and causes things to start to come apart. We don't want our cities to come apart. So maybe it's about analogy.

11:25But what we do want is is that paradigm shift to occur. I'd love to hear do you have any suggestion? Is there anything that you're like, Hey, this is advice that helped me that I'd love to be able to pass on to others that are trying to do this work to you? I think it's really easy for people who consider themselves urbanists. And I wouldn't call myself an urbanist. I'm just a person who lives in a city and loves it. But I think it's easy to look for urbanist groups. And sometimes I wonder, especially to start our own urbanist group, that's sort of a Calgary thing. I will do this person and everybody wants their own special thing. And sometimes it's useful to look around and say, who's already doing something? I think strong counts advantage is that it comes out from the numbers, the math side. And when you understand the math, then that explains the interest in bikes or in housing or whatever, say streets and whatnot. And that, that I think can combine, can unite other groups. I also think, frankly, there are other groups that will be very helpful.

12:28There are social groups that should exist and will need support and will need good people to be involved. And when somebody says, is involved, then it gives a chance to say, by the way, here's why things are falling apart. And I do have an answer for that. In a way that if you're only talking to fellow strong counties, it's tough to make those connections. Reminds me, I was reaching out on behalf of Del Pop, our local conversation group, to real tours in my community, because I said, look, you're so busy. You also have a lot of people in your office that are crying, are distraught because nothing meets their available resources compared to what is available on the market. If you have those people, like instead of just sending them off with a, with a lollipop and, and best wishes, send them to us and help them become advocates. And we've not seen the uptake, but I feel like that is to your point, like there's a lot of unlikely allies in this who are coming at it from slightly different paths, but are realizing, oh, we really have to be responsible and grapple with this.

13:31And so in that context, I mean, you mentioned water mains that have been very prominent in Calgary, because they've been falling apart. Other responsibilities that maybe are, are still needing to be addressed down the road. But in that context, I always like to close with what is it that gives you hope as you carry on being a strong-town advocate? I think it's seeing people connect those dots. Maybe this isn't the best way to put it, but frankly, our taxes are too high for people to pay comfortably and too low to actually do the job. It's like the, the bad Goldilocks spot. Right. And maybe when we admit that, it, it gives us a chance to say, so what, what are we going to do? And in the last year, as we've seen more people get involved with strong-towns Calgary and see it work together and be more consistent in what we're doing, there's real power in that. And it encourages me to keep going to know when I can bite my tongue and let somebody else speak and also know when it's time for me to think as a planning commissioner.

14:37I guess there are moments when it's useful to know whether you should work inside of the system or outside of it. At the moment, I can, I have that opportunity to do a little bit of both, but my focus really should be on working in that system to try and prove the discussions that nobody else can have. Yeah. And this is fantastic. And it really does capture, you know, the spirit of why we wanted to do bottom-up shorts to be able to profile individuals who are like, I'm seeking humbly to observe what's going on in my community and take action inspired by ideas of lasting value. And in that context, I would definitely encourage you if you are interested in connecting with Nathan, he is very generous with his time and thoughts in the strong-towns comments. And so that's commons.strongtowns.org is a fantastic place to be able to connect and to be encouraged by Nathan's contributions there. And as always, if you're in the Calgary area or you want to take inspiration from it, check out what's wrong-towns Calgary is doing in their work and continued advocacy within

15:39the community. Nathan, thank you for coming up on bottom-up shorts. Shorts today. Shorts. Bottom-up shirts. Bottom-up shorts. I always say bottom-up shorts is how you put on shorts from the bottom-up, but shirt doesn't work that way. So, great to have you on. Happily. Awesome stuff. Well, folks, take care of your places and continued building those connections. I love Nathan's point about the bad-goly locks effect that our taxes actually aren't covering what they need to cover and also feel like they are more than we can manage. And in that context, we know that there is a path forward. And so, with that, take care and take care of your places. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a non-profit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deep in your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at Strong Towns.org slash membership.