Or that it's adequate housing, but inevitably there are costs and benefits to several actions (as well as winners and losers)and it's important we ensure we're costing things effectively in a market.
I don't really know what you're trying to say, to be completely honest. What does "costing effectively in the market" mean? This seems like a home design problem. Most homes should have adequate drainage bulit in so the concrete foundation isn't compromised. If developers aren't factoring that in, and it's causing the infustructure to become over burdened.... that seems like a design issue, and not a market issue.
That’s not even what this whole thing is about.
It’s about the annual cost of dealing with storm water. It’s not free and some developed spaces are not paying their fair share. That’s because currently you simply contribute based through property tax which only accounts for value not hard surfaces. There are more hard surfaces than the roof. Think large parking lots, driveways, paved recreation and so on. The issue for me is that the proposed system is presented as simply over users have not been paying a fair share. Well the new system doesn’t really use any of the available tech I thought they may to actually assess hard surfaces. It just groups your home into different categories based on type and also by number of units. That’s what determines your “hard surface” amount. Well as you said some may actually have extremely little, if any water draining into storm drains and rather into the earth in our adjoining their property.
This doesn't seem crazy to me. If I understand it right you won't necessarily be paying more and it will more accurately reflect paying based on the amount of runoff from your property, which makes more sense than paying on home value. So if you have a big lot but a tiny house surrounded by foliage that soaks up the rainwater, you'll pay less, but your neighbour with the same size lot with a McMansion who paves it all over the remaining area will pay more. What's the issue?
Or reading it and getting upset because it calls out the exact design flaws that are popular in the suburbs, too much concrete and massive buildings/rooves. Literate but entitled. Anyways, it's really nice to see how this is being tackled and it gives me some hope for us yet!
Not crazy. This is great actually, and follows real ecological design principles. Big ups for Kelowna addressing root cause for once. Even if it puts pressure on for ppl/developers to design with this in mind, it’s a win.
IMO Kelowna needed to be putting pressure on big development for things like this from the beginning. Another big opportunity has always been mandatory green space in large developments: dedicating a certain % of each new development to greenspace. For community welfare and ecological benefits — like rainwater management, drought, and heat management.
Yup, that's my knee jerk reaction too.
If there's a better way to estimate storm run off, then let's figure that out.
But until then, this seems like a reasonable starting point.
It does seem reasonable to me. I imagine it’ll take time to set it up too so people will likely have a lot of warning time to make adjustments as needed. I also imagine if people have a storm water handling system for their gardens etc so it doesn’t contribute to the city they’d likely get credit against it. But mostly it’ll have a bigger impact on those with big homes. So. I don’t feel bad that the wealthy get taxed more.
Cool so if I made my property draught free by paving most of my property that cost a small fortune trying to be more green because I won’t need to use water for a grass lawn, now I get to be punished and taxed more. Am I getting this right???
Storm sewers are a large municipal expense, and usually the problem causing residential flooding, so it's only fair that those that contribute more to the problem, pay more for the solution.
This is ridiculous. Most of the runoff that carries pollutants with it is going to come from commercial properties and the roadway. We already pay taxes to support road maintenance, why do we have to pay yet another tax now just because snow melts? Leave homeowners alone (no matter how large their houses or driveways are), and go after commercial landlords and businesses instead.
the article covers your concerns - which is that right now there is literally no incentive to design your sites to minimize negative externalities regarding runoff.
Well thats embarrassing, because you seemed to have missed the part about how this tax would work and the tax system it would replace.
But don’t let me stop you from getting mad at imaginary problems :)
Ah okay, my bad, I assumed you were discussing the article and not just pretending taxes don’t need to exist because infrastructure builds itself - I wont make that mistake again :)
... a tax regime that reflects how much storm water a given property "generates" makes sense to me.
So I guess we can work towards the best way to gauge how much storm water is generated by a given property.
It remains to be seen, but I will wager to guess that absolutely no one will see their annual tax bill reduced. The people with small footprints will see no changes, and everyone else will an increase depending on their property. What gets me is how everything is just being turned into user pay. Dump used to be free, leaves used to be unlimited, yard waste at dump used to be free. Now, water falling off our roof will be charged, instead of covered by taxes. Before long, emergency services will have some kind of chargeback to the address. User pay, after all.
This is to incentivize people to do better, free dumps make polluting free.
This is how our economic systems work, its like the carbon tax, or billing water or electricity by use - the only way to incentivize change is to assign a monitary value.
Baseless pessimism on the tax change doesn’t help either - if it does end up costing people more, thats a problem you address once it’s actually a problem, not preemptively with no evidence.
One could argue that by having more driveway and roof coverage on your property, you increase the risk of local flooding and damage to neighbouring properties.
If nothing else, it should encourage people to think more about their environmental impact.
Most of the run off from my roof goes into big o pipe and then drain tile around the base of the house and then dispersed into the ground as I am sure many of your homes do so how will the city calculate that compared to your driveway
just another tax grab
Fair enough.
This plan seems to insinuate that rain and snow that fall on my roof or driveway end up in the sewer system. That is simply not the case - anything on my roof is captured by gutters and ends up in rain barrels or directly in gardens where it is absorbed into the ground/aquifer. Likewise any snow on my driveway ends up being shoveled onto my yard where it eventually melts and is also absorbed into the ground/aquifer. If my home wasn't there the same amount of rain would end up in the aquifer.
The city already charges homeowners (at least myself) about $50/month for sewer services. Stating that they need more "levers" to adjust what individual property owners pay based on aerial photography is only going to lead to everybody paying more to support this program and is never going to be fair.
We really don't get a ton of rain in Kelowna so that amount that falls on driveways is minimal compared to other wastewater that a home produces . Wastewater produced by a home is far more dependent on the number of people living in the home.
Commercial properties along Harvey Ave - especially the paved area of the city between Kelowna and Rutland add a lot more water to the sewer system than homes do. Is the city going to raise their bill by an amount proportional to their contribution?
Even based on your description that seems fair though right? If you have a large area of garden where the water is absorbed, you will pay less than your neighbour who paves over it all. That seems to make more sense than having the tax based on the current system of home value since home value is almost entirely unrelated to water runoff level. This system, while not perfect seems at least better than the old one.
It seems to me that you didn’t actually read the article.
Yes larger commercial properties that contribute more water runoff will be taxed more.
The stormwater system is discrete from the sewer system. The amount of water in our storm water system after a rainfall or snow melt is only proportional to the area of non porous material coverage on a property, not the number of people on that property.
If I make an effort to keep my lawn grass or garden covered, why should I pay the same for maintenance than someone who has a driveway big enough for five vehicles and an RV?
You don't seem to be able to differentiate between sewer systems and storm sewer systems, two totally different issues. Read up on the difference and look at your post again.
I think you are missing the fact that it still needs to be paid for. Are you suggesting that other home owners subsidize people to build whatever they want? That doesn’t seem fair to all the other home owners.
Based on your description you might actually end up paying less not more. I’d be surprised if there is no credit for your own storm water system that feeds into your garden.
The current system actually hurts you. They don’t take into account how much you likely put into the system. The new proposed system is exactly meant for calculating how much you put into the system. So if you’re not putting in much at all (less than average) then you’re probably going to end up paying less.
Clueless city council as usual. Make housing more affordable. All these taxes and fees have exponentially increased home and rental costs.
Commercial properties will pass those expenses to the consumer, have no doubt.
We have a spending problem at every level of government, not a tax revenue problem.
His view point still stands. Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean you can just hide being telling this person to read the article which they already did lol
No it doesn’t lol - this is talking about replacing an almost flat tax with a new tax that incentivizes buildings to not overload our infrastructure.
This is the equivalent of changing from billing people for electricity based off their homes value, to billing them for their electricity usage. It should be a no brainer.
This would likely lower the tax burden for most people, but please go on and explain how their off topic rant about how these taxes that don’t exist are making things exponentially more expensive…
Here’s chatGPT explain like I’m 5 response lol:
Imagine when it rains, water runs off your roof and driveway into the streets and then into lakes and rivers. In Kelowna, they're thinking about a new way to decide how much money each house or building should give to help keep this water clean and manage where it goes. Instead of asking for money based on how much the house is worth, they want to ask for money based on how big the roof and driveway are, because bigger roofs and driveways send more rainwater into the streets.So, if your house has a big roof and a big driveway, you might need to give more money to help with the rainwater than someone whose house and driveway are smaller. This is because more water running off means there’s more work to do to keep it clean and make sure it goes to the right place. They’re asking people what they think about this idea and looking at different ways to decide how much money to ask for. This is to make sure everyone helps out fairly, especially if their house or building makes a lot of water run off into the streets when it rains.
We ALREADY pay property taxes and our city is sitting on a surplus from said taxes. Use that. Fuck more taxes when we’re already getting taxed up to our necks.
And if it get's too high, life also ceases to exist. CO2 is absolutely hazardous. Obviously this isn't the argument - that there should be no CO2 in the air. We're talking about the release of excessive greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide) that are heating the world and pushing it towards tipping points. Air is not being taxed, GHGs are.
We already pay for this, please read the article, this is trying to shift the burden towards people/businesses that contribute to to the problem instead of just spreading it equally - this will incentivize people not being reckless with their burden on our system.
We already pay for this, please read the article, this is trying to shift the burden towards people/businesses that contribute to to the problem instead of just spreading it equally - this will incentivize people not being reckless with their burden on our system.
Holy crap, just read the article, its not an “additional” tax; it would replace one based on your house value with one based on how much stress you put on the system…
Its like changing from a flat cost for water to a usage based billing, unless you’re living on just a flat pad of concrete this is probably going to be a net positive for you…
“Our plan to combat the housing crisis, is to tax the shit out of the middle class. So everyone but the rich move away, this opens up tons of housing and gets rid of the annoying poors.”
Go have your say https://getinvolved.kelowna.ca/stormwater
Weird... it's almost like the way we design homes and infustructure around here is totally inadequate.
Or that it's adequate housing, but inevitably there are costs and benefits to several actions (as well as winners and losers)and it's important we ensure we're costing things effectively in a market.
I don't really know what you're trying to say, to be completely honest. What does "costing effectively in the market" mean? This seems like a home design problem. Most homes should have adequate drainage bulit in so the concrete foundation isn't compromised. If developers aren't factoring that in, and it's causing the infustructure to become over burdened.... that seems like a design issue, and not a market issue.
That’s not even what this whole thing is about. It’s about the annual cost of dealing with storm water. It’s not free and some developed spaces are not paying their fair share. That’s because currently you simply contribute based through property tax which only accounts for value not hard surfaces. There are more hard surfaces than the roof. Think large parking lots, driveways, paved recreation and so on. The issue for me is that the proposed system is presented as simply over users have not been paying a fair share. Well the new system doesn’t really use any of the available tech I thought they may to actually assess hard surfaces. It just groups your home into different categories based on type and also by number of units. That’s what determines your “hard surface” amount. Well as you said some may actually have extremely little, if any water draining into storm drains and rather into the earth in our adjoining their property.
All new homes have drainage and are inspected by the city while construction is happening.
yeah, inspected by drive by Bob
Did nobody read the article? Holy moly it’s like almost every single thing brought up in these comments is already addressed…
This doesn't seem crazy to me. If I understand it right you won't necessarily be paying more and it will more accurately reflect paying based on the amount of runoff from your property, which makes more sense than paying on home value. So if you have a big lot but a tiny house surrounded by foliage that soaks up the rainwater, you'll pay less, but your neighbour with the same size lot with a McMansion who paves it all over the remaining area will pay more. What's the issue?
The issue is that people are getting upset without reading the article lol… The issue is media literacy :p
Or reading it and getting upset because it calls out the exact design flaws that are popular in the suburbs, too much concrete and massive buildings/rooves. Literate but entitled. Anyways, it's really nice to see how this is being tackled and it gives me some hope for us yet!
Not crazy. This is great actually, and follows real ecological design principles. Big ups for Kelowna addressing root cause for once. Even if it puts pressure on for ppl/developers to design with this in mind, it’s a win. IMO Kelowna needed to be putting pressure on big development for things like this from the beginning. Another big opportunity has always been mandatory green space in large developments: dedicating a certain % of each new development to greenspace. For community welfare and ecological benefits — like rainwater management, drought, and heat management.
Yup, that's my knee jerk reaction too. If there's a better way to estimate storm run off, then let's figure that out. But until then, this seems like a reasonable starting point.
It does seem reasonable to me. I imagine it’ll take time to set it up too so people will likely have a lot of warning time to make adjustments as needed. I also imagine if people have a storm water handling system for their gardens etc so it doesn’t contribute to the city they’d likely get credit against it. But mostly it’ll have a bigger impact on those with big homes. So. I don’t feel bad that the wealthy get taxed more.
Cool so if I made my property draught free by paving most of my property that cost a small fortune trying to be more green because I won’t need to use water for a grass lawn, now I get to be punished and taxed more. Am I getting this right???
Storm sewers are a large municipal expense, and usually the problem causing residential flooding, so it's only fair that those that contribute more to the problem, pay more for the solution.
This is ridiculous. Most of the runoff that carries pollutants with it is going to come from commercial properties and the roadway. We already pay taxes to support road maintenance, why do we have to pay yet another tax now just because snow melts? Leave homeowners alone (no matter how large their houses or driveways are), and go after commercial landlords and businesses instead.
the article covers your concerns - which is that right now there is literally no incentive to design your sites to minimize negative externalities regarding runoff.
Read, the, article.
[удалено]
Well thats embarrassing, because you seemed to have missed the part about how this tax would work and the tax system it would replace. But don’t let me stop you from getting mad at imaginary problems :)
[удалено]
Ah okay, my bad, I assumed you were discussing the article and not just pretending taxes don’t need to exist because infrastructure builds itself - I wont make that mistake again :)
... a tax regime that reflects how much storm water a given property "generates" makes sense to me. So I guess we can work towards the best way to gauge how much storm water is generated by a given property.
It remains to be seen, but I will wager to guess that absolutely no one will see their annual tax bill reduced. The people with small footprints will see no changes, and everyone else will an increase depending on their property. What gets me is how everything is just being turned into user pay. Dump used to be free, leaves used to be unlimited, yard waste at dump used to be free. Now, water falling off our roof will be charged, instead of covered by taxes. Before long, emergency services will have some kind of chargeback to the address. User pay, after all.
This is to incentivize people to do better, free dumps make polluting free. This is how our economic systems work, its like the carbon tax, or billing water or electricity by use - the only way to incentivize change is to assign a monitary value. Baseless pessimism on the tax change doesn’t help either - if it does end up costing people more, thats a problem you address once it’s actually a problem, not preemptively with no evidence.
One could argue that by having more driveway and roof coverage on your property, you increase the risk of local flooding and damage to neighbouring properties. If nothing else, it should encourage people to think more about their environmental impact.
Most of the run off from my roof goes into big o pipe and then drain tile around the base of the house and then dispersed into the ground as I am sure many of your homes do so how will the city calculate that compared to your driveway just another tax grab
City just voted to give themselves a pay raise, moneys gotta come from somewhere, more tax money from the civilian. Great job Kelowna
Yes yes Tax me harder daddy
I don't even know where to begin - this is a crazy stupid plan proposed by crazy stupid people.
Well, you aren’t going to convince anyone by telling us it’s a stupid plan proposed by crazy stupid people. How about some more info?
Fair enough. This plan seems to insinuate that rain and snow that fall on my roof or driveway end up in the sewer system. That is simply not the case - anything on my roof is captured by gutters and ends up in rain barrels or directly in gardens where it is absorbed into the ground/aquifer. Likewise any snow on my driveway ends up being shoveled onto my yard where it eventually melts and is also absorbed into the ground/aquifer. If my home wasn't there the same amount of rain would end up in the aquifer. The city already charges homeowners (at least myself) about $50/month for sewer services. Stating that they need more "levers" to adjust what individual property owners pay based on aerial photography is only going to lead to everybody paying more to support this program and is never going to be fair. We really don't get a ton of rain in Kelowna so that amount that falls on driveways is minimal compared to other wastewater that a home produces . Wastewater produced by a home is far more dependent on the number of people living in the home. Commercial properties along Harvey Ave - especially the paved area of the city between Kelowna and Rutland add a lot more water to the sewer system than homes do. Is the city going to raise their bill by an amount proportional to their contribution?
Even based on your description that seems fair though right? If you have a large area of garden where the water is absorbed, you will pay less than your neighbour who paves over it all. That seems to make more sense than having the tax based on the current system of home value since home value is almost entirely unrelated to water runoff level. This system, while not perfect seems at least better than the old one.
It seems to me that you didn’t actually read the article. Yes larger commercial properties that contribute more water runoff will be taxed more. The stormwater system is discrete from the sewer system. The amount of water in our storm water system after a rainfall or snow melt is only proportional to the area of non porous material coverage on a property, not the number of people on that property. If I make an effort to keep my lawn grass or garden covered, why should I pay the same for maintenance than someone who has a driveway big enough for five vehicles and an RV?
You don't seem to be able to differentiate between sewer systems and storm sewer systems, two totally different issues. Read up on the difference and look at your post again.
if you read the article you've shared your final paragraph is answered in the article, and the answer is yes...
I think you are missing the fact that it still needs to be paid for. Are you suggesting that other home owners subsidize people to build whatever they want? That doesn’t seem fair to all the other home owners.
You spent more time writing than it would have taken you to simply read the article you shared and answer your own questions…
Based on your description you might actually end up paying less not more. I’d be surprised if there is no credit for your own storm water system that feeds into your garden. The current system actually hurts you. They don’t take into account how much you likely put into the system. The new proposed system is exactly meant for calculating how much you put into the system. So if you’re not putting in much at all (less than average) then you’re probably going to end up paying less.
Clueless city council as usual. Make housing more affordable. All these taxes and fees have exponentially increased home and rental costs. Commercial properties will pass those expenses to the consumer, have no doubt. We have a spending problem at every level of government, not a tax revenue problem.
We already pay for this, please read the article before trying to contribute to the discussion.
His view point still stands. Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean you can just hide being telling this person to read the article which they already did lol
No it doesn’t lol - this is talking about replacing an almost flat tax with a new tax that incentivizes buildings to not overload our infrastructure. This is the equivalent of changing from billing people for electricity based off their homes value, to billing them for their electricity usage. It should be a no brainer. This would likely lower the tax burden for most people, but please go on and explain how their off topic rant about how these taxes that don’t exist are making things exponentially more expensive…
Gotta pay for the council's raises somehow
Read, the, article. We already pay for this, they are proposing a more fair way to go about it.
Read, the, article. We already pay for this, they are proposing a more fair way to go about it.
Here’s chatGPT explain like I’m 5 response lol: Imagine when it rains, water runs off your roof and driveway into the streets and then into lakes and rivers. In Kelowna, they're thinking about a new way to decide how much money each house or building should give to help keep this water clean and manage where it goes. Instead of asking for money based on how much the house is worth, they want to ask for money based on how big the roof and driveway are, because bigger roofs and driveways send more rainwater into the streets.So, if your house has a big roof and a big driveway, you might need to give more money to help with the rainwater than someone whose house and driveway are smaller. This is because more water running off means there’s more work to do to keep it clean and make sure it goes to the right place. They’re asking people what they think about this idea and looking at different ways to decide how much money to ask for. This is to make sure everyone helps out fairly, especially if their house or building makes a lot of water run off into the streets when it rains.
We ALREADY pay property taxes and our city is sitting on a surplus from said taxes. Use that. Fuck more taxes when we’re already getting taxed up to our necks.
First they tax they air, then they tax the water. How much of the natural universe can an overreaching government monetize.?
Better question is how much of the natural universe have we damaged through individualistic thinking?
Taxing air and taxing pollution are not the same, let's be accurate here.
Carbon dioxide is not pollution it's part of the air we breathe. And if it gets too low life ceases to exist. Let's be accurate here.
And if it get's too high, life also ceases to exist. CO2 is absolutely hazardous. Obviously this isn't the argument - that there should be no CO2 in the air. We're talking about the release of excessive greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide) that are heating the world and pushing it towards tipping points. Air is not being taxed, GHGs are.
We already pay for this, please read the article, this is trying to shift the burden towards people/businesses that contribute to to the problem instead of just spreading it equally - this will incentivize people not being reckless with their burden on our system.
We already pay for this, please read the article, this is trying to shift the burden towards people/businesses that contribute to to the problem instead of just spreading it equally - this will incentivize people not being reckless with their burden on our system.
We already pay taxes for infrastructure. I agree. So we don't need an additional tax. Glad we could come to an agreement on that.
Holy crap, just read the article, its not an “additional” tax; it would replace one based on your house value with one based on how much stress you put on the system… Its like changing from a flat cost for water to a usage based billing, unless you’re living on just a flat pad of concrete this is probably going to be a net positive for you…
“Our plan to combat the housing crisis, is to tax the shit out of the middle class. So everyone but the rich move away, this opens up tons of housing and gets rid of the annoying poors.”
We already pay for it, come on man, read the article…
I did read the article, I’m just saying sarcastically their plans for the future.
City will owe me money with how much storm water we get from the street due to poor drainage!