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Let’s Talk Property Taxes!

New Westminster’s 2025 Property Tax Notices are out, so let’s talk property taxes!

There will undoubtedly be millions of pixels devoted to complaining about 28% or 35% or 81% property tax increases over the last three years by certain anti-tax blowhards, so I figured I’d help put property taxes in context using numbers.

Specifically, the numbers I’ll be using are the exact property taxes we’ve paid for our townhouse in New Westminster over the past nine years.

In 2016, the first year we paid property taxes in New Westminster, we paid $1,264.73. In 2025, nine years later, our property tax bill is $2,415.42, nearly double! This works out to a yearly increase of 7.53%. One year our property tax went up 15.5%, another year it actually went down 1.07%, this year they went up 2.71%, but on average our property tax increased 7.53% each year.

Over those nine years we have paid a grand total of $17,983.23 to the City of New Westminster in property taxes.

But hang on a second. Property values have changed quite a bit over those nine years as well. In 2016, our property was assessed at $370,000. This year our assessed value is $858,000, much more than double! One year it went up 33%, another year it went down 0.61%, but if you average it all out, our property’s value has increased 9.6% each year. Compare that to our yearly property tax increase of 7.53%, would you?

And let’s talk about absolute dollars too. Remember that we’ve paid nearly $18,000 in property taxes in nine years. In the first year we owned our house, its assessed value went from $370,000 to $494,000. In one single year our net worth increased by $124,000 without us having to do anything. In nine years it’s increased by $488,000 and we’ve only had to pay $18,000 in property taxes. Don’t forget, that $488,000 is pure profit because we live in the house, if we sell it we don’t pay any taxes on it.

In other words, in one year we made nearly seven times as much money on our house than we’ve paid in property taxes over nine years we’ve lived here.

So next time someone complains that property taxes are rising too fast, remember the bigger picture: tax bills have grown, but property values and untaxed wealth have grown even faster.

New West Progressives: Claiming Victory For Stuff They Voted Against

July 8, 2024. New Westminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone submits a motion to have staff update the City’s travel policies to make travel by members of Council more transparent, requiring them to write a summary of their travels, include the expenses incurred, describe their learnings, amongst other things. The motion passes, but Councillors Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas, both of the New West Progressives, oppose it.

January 27, 2025. New Westminster City staff return a report to Council describing proposed changes to the Council Travel and Expense Policy to make travel by members of Council more transparent, requiring them to write a summary of their travels, include the expenses incurred, describe their learnings, amongst other things. The motion passes, and this time Councillors Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas vote in favour, but the motion would have passed regardless of how they voted.

January 29, 2025: New West Progressives claim success, saying “thanks to your NWP representatives on Council, we’ve made some real ‘progress’!!”

Also January 29, 2025: I write a blog post pointing out how Patrick Johnstone brought forward the initial motion that got the ball rolling, how Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas of the New Westminster Progressives voted against the motion, how city staff did the work between July 2024 and January 2025, and how in January 2025 Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas of the New Westminster Progressives took credit for it despite doing nothing but vote at the last possible step.

Facebook Screenshot from the New Westminster Progressives claiming victory for work they played no part in other than voting in favour at the very end

Letter: Compassion, empathy needed to help New West’s homeless population

I had this letter published in the New Westminster Record, and I post it here because I own my words:

Re: Should the City of New Westminster commit to ending homelessness? (Dec. 12, 2024)

It was incredibly disheartening watching the council workshop where council discussed the Interim Housing Needs Report on Dec. 9.

Shockingly, Coun. Paul Minhas asked if the police have programs to slow “so-called transients” from moving to New Westminster.

It is absolutely appalling that a city councillor would even think that police should be in the business of deciding who gets to move to our city.

We live in a society where people are free to live where they like, not in some police state where only the select few are allowed.

I ask Mr. Minhas: what did you mean when you asked if the police have programs that would “address this issue”? How do you see the police addressing the issue of homelessness?

And then, Coun. Daniel Fontaine votes down the housing needs report because it doesn’t list the number of units it would take to end homelessness.

Let’s be honest here, the number of units doesn’t matter to Mr. Fontaine because he would vote against them anyhow.

After all, he’s already voted against provincially funded projects that would help our unhoused neighbours get off the streets and into beds or homes. He says he wants to end homelessness, yet his actions suggest otherwise.

Luckily, the adults in the room voted in favour of endorsing the Interim Housing Needs Report.

Thank you to Mayor Patrick Johnstone, Coun. Ruby Campbell, Coun. Jaimie McEvoy, and especially Coun. Tasha Henderson for showing compassion and empathy, and understanding what our city needs to move forward to help everyone find housing in New Westminster.

Daniel Fontaine’s Bad Math

Earlier today (October 28, 2024) New Westminster City Council debated a rezoning application coming for downtown New Westminster. During the debate, Councillor Daniel Fontaine stated the development would bring “four World Trade Centers onto that site” as a visualization of what sort of development would be coming.

The development in question (88 Tenth Street — Columbia Square) would bring up to 3 million square feet of residential units. It also includes 122,000 square feet of retail. Additionally, there would be at least 42,000 square feet of commercial office space, plus some daycare and potentially a school. Let’s say 3,250,000 square feet of development, just to round things off.

During the meeting Councillor Fontaine didn’t clarify which World Trade Center he was talking about, the most famous being the complex in New York City that was tragically destroyed by terrorists in 2001. Vancouver has a World Trade Centre building near Canada Place, perhaps he meant that one?

But he clarified in a Facebook video after the meeting, stating very clearly he was referring to New York’s World Trade Center.

Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas incorrectly stating that the 88 Tenth Street redevelopment in New Westminster is the "equivalent to basically four world trade centers from New York". — Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas incorrectly stating that the 88 Tenth Street redevelopment in New Westminster is the “equivalent to basically four world trade centers from New York”.

Here’s the problem: his math is completely wrong.

If you assume that by “world trade center” he means either 1 WTC or 2 WTC (these are the “twin towers” that were struck by airplanes in 2001), then he’s wrong. Each tower had a square footage of 4,759,040 square feet. Four “World Trade Centers” would then be over 19,000,000 square feet, nearly six times the size of the 88 Tenth Street redevelopment.

If 88 Tenth Street were really “four World Trade Centers” then it would have to be six times larger than it actually is. It’s not even one World Trade Center, let alone four.

Or maybe he was referring to the entire World Trade Center complex of seven buildings? Problem: seven buildings are way bigger than one building, and their total square footage was 13,400,000 square feet, so four of those would be a whopping 53,600,000 square feet, well over sixteen times bigger than 88 Tenth Street.

Either way, “four World Trade Centers” is wildly incorrect.

Daniel Fontaine needs to remove his video and say he was wildly incorrect with his “four World Trade Centers” statement before it catches on as some sort of warped “truth”.

Daniel Fontaine’s “undemocratic” stunt

On Wednesday, September 4, 2024, a Special Council Meeting popped up on the City of New Westminster’s calendar. It would be held on Thursday, September 5, and had one item for discussion: “2025 Budget: Tax Rate Proposal”. Other than that, there was no information about what the meeting was going to be about.

The timing for the meeting was strange, as on September 2 the City of New Westminster had just closed an online survey about the 2025 budget. Two days is nowhere near enough time to collate feedback and make any sort of informed discussion or decision about the 2025 budget. The 2024 budget’s preparation cycle had council workshops happening in the fall, which is where they look at the public feedback, the various proposals from staff, and work out what the budget will look like when they vote on it in February.

When the meeting happened, Ruby Campbell and Tasha Henderson questioned the agenda, asking for more information about what the meeting was going to be discussing, because all they had was the “2025 Budget: Tax Rate Proposal”. Apparently a motion was emailed to them at 4:02pm (note that the meeting was scheduled to start at 4pm), but this motion has not been made public on the City’s website, so it is still unclear what they were going to be discussing. (Update: the motion now appears on the minutes for the meeting.)

During the discussion about approving the agenda, it came out that Paul Minhas and Daniel Fontaine called the special council meeting, which they’re allowed to do under the legislation that dictates how city councils in BC operate. At no point during the discussion about approving the agenda did either Fontaine or Minhas provide any sort of clarifications about what the agenda was going to be and what they wanted to discuss during the meeting.

The motion to approve the agenda was defeated, and the meeting was subsequently adjourned.

Shortly after that Fontaine took to Facebook to complain that his “legal right to debate” was denied (it wasn’t, the meeting he called was still held), and that it was “completely undemocratic” (which is a weird way to say “they voted to not approve the agenda in a clear and open vote”). He then posted what he says is the “motion that was not permitted for debate”, a motion that has yet to appear on the City of New Westminster’s website or in any official document. (Update: the motion now appears on the minutes for the meeting.)

This is one of the cheapest political stunts Fontaine has pulled in his time as an elected official. He very easily could have presented this motion on August 26 so they could debate it at the September 9 regular council meeting. This would have given council, staff, and the public ample time to digest his motion and collect any sort of supporting information they may need to discuss and debate it properly. Instead he called a special council meeting (which is his right, and his right to do so was in no way infringed) with only a year and four words to go off of (“2025 Budget: Tax Rate Proposal”), said absolutely nothing while the rest of council was trying to figure out what was actually going to be discussed, and then after the rest of council votes in favour of not discussing something incredibly vague, he ran off to Facebook to “issue a statement”.

Politicians like Daniel Fontaine are why people get fed up with politics. His stunt does absolutely nothing to serve the residents of New Westminster. Why didn’t he present a notice of motion for this like he’s done in the past? Why did he keep the motion secret up until the very last minute? How do the residents of New Westminster benefit from this?

Let’s discuss property tax rates, sure. Are they too high? Are they too low? Sure, let’s have that discussion. But we have to be informed about what we’re discussing. “2025 Budget: Tax Rate Proposal” is not something anybody can have an informed discussion and debate about. The entire budgeting process is designed to provide as much information as possible, which is why it takes about eight months, from community engagement starting in June to the final approval of the budget in late February / early March.

Calling a special meeting to discuss “2025 Budget: Tax Rate Proposal” with no other information is the completely wrong way of doing this. It has zero information to go off of, nobody can prepare anything to discuss because it’s so vague. Daniel Fontaine has been through two budget cycles now, he knows very well how the process works, he knows exactly when this sort of discussion happens (it happens during the council workshops — which are open to the public! — between October and January). And yet he decides to drop this in. Why?

All this does is get Daniel Fontaine’s name in the news again, stirs up outrage among his supporters, and makes everybody else roll their eyes. This is the latest — and lowest — in a sad string of stunts. If Fontaine really wants to make a name for himself, he should quit with the self-aggrandizing stunts that only serve the interests of Daniel Fontaine and start acting in the interests of the people of New Westminster.