Saying No to Sprawl can help avoid a Tax Increase
Costs of Sprawl are not covered by Development Charges. Sprawl becomes subsidized by existing households
Taxpayers who already live in the municipality or region that permits sprawl end up paying for sprawl developments through higher taxes and/or lower service levels. Development charges do not cover maintenance, operations and replacement of city infrastructure and services to new areas. So as the number of kilometers of roads, sidewalks, water, sewer & transit expands the costs borne directly by taxpayers increases. These increases are not fully covered by property taxes in the new areas of development. City council then needs to make a decision to raise taxes or reduce service levels or a combination of both.
Free Nature Based Solutions Need to be replaced by Costly Infrastructure
As sprawl spreads, there are fewer green spaces available to clean our air and water for free. When a greenfield is developed, much of it gets paved over with concrete, creating surfaces that are impenetrable to water. Land that once absorbed water and stored it underground, slowly filtering it out into rivers and streams, no longer does this. Instead pricier engineered solutions are required to manage stormwater and drainage to prevent dirty sewer water from backing up into our homes.
Hidden Healthcare Costs
The hidden costs of sprawl to our health are often overlooked. When developers are allowed to build sprawl unchecked, everything becomes very spread out and daily errands, such as buying groceries, going to work, and picking up and dropping off the kids at school, necessitate a lot of driving. While this constant driving harms the environment by increasing global warming pollution, all this driving has also been linked to poor health outcomes for residents, including increasing obesity rates.
Increased cost of regional roads
Sprawl and the car dependency that is associated with it, leads to increased use and dependence on nearby regional roads which increases costs and taxes outside of the City. Additionally, systems like water and sewage are evenly distributed across regions so you may be paying for sprawl even though you don’t live there.
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