Cobourg News Blog

JD put affordable housing at the top of the list and noted it is a county issue. I think this is important for a couple of reasons. Politicians, of all levels, really need to do the jobs they were elected to do. For our local politicians that is representing the best interests of the citizens of Cobourg. There is nothing wrong with helping rental housing projects but for the most part there are other issues to deal with. Affordable housing is not within the town’s responsibility.
 
The other reason I find placing affordable housing first on the list interesting is that I think it represents a big problem. Housing has changed so much over the decades. How many people lived in a small 2 or 3 bedroom house with parents, siblings and 1 bathroom. Now people want bigger houses with everybody having their own bedroom and even own bathroom. This is much more expensive. When you take into account all the things, like appliances, that do not last nearly as long as they once did, housing costs are much, much higher than they were. A smaller house requires fewer resources to build, less energy to heat, etc. Have you ever shopped for a new kitchen faucet? There could be over 100 options from one company alone. What if there were 3 or 4 options? Replacement parts could be readily available which would reduce maintenance costs. The same is true for appliances. How many of those settings do you actually use on your
clothes washer?
 
Safety of our housing has gone so far as to make things worse in some ways. With the strict electrical and fire codes new houses need arc-fault circuit breakers and hardwired smoke detectors with strobe lights in each bedroom. This adds to the cost of housing making it less affordable. Housing is safer for those who can afford it but it could mean those who can’t are living on the street. All this safety helps the companies making the products but does it have a net benefit to society?
 
Housing represents a bigger problem. It is relatively easy to add social services, like government funded daycare, but it must be paid for. There is a point when government is too big with too many people working for the government directly or living on government services. Local politicians need to know what services we need, provide those services as efficiently as possible and not add services we cannot afford.

I think that we ( the taxpayers, the Town) need to do more to encourage qualified and interested people to run for office. Our future as a town will be determined by the decisions that we make now.
There are many qualified citizens who, with some encouragement and support, might be willing to run for office.
We should do more to encourage and celebrate those citizens willing to make the sacrifice and run for municipal office in order to help build the future for Cobourg.

There is little that Cobourg can do about cost of living increases other than to control taxes. Sadly, things don’t look good.

A huge portion of town expenses are salaries and they will almost certainly increase. In addition to wage increases for staff, Council has approved spending over $1M per year for unnecessary additional managers. Fuel for buses, snowplows and other purposes is another significant expense that is increasing.

Council has recently approved increasing spending on storm water management by about $1.2M per year (https://www.cobourgblog.com/assets/2022/Stormwater-Rate-Assessment-FAQs.pdf, bottom of page 1). This has been deceitfully termed a “user fee” but actually amounts to a property tax increase of almost 5%.

Add the desire of some to spend more on county responsibilities of “affordable” housing, drug harm mitigation and other issues. Plus John’s list of expenses. Will residents like a 15% tax increase? Tighten your belts!