Letter To a Distant Mayor

White Rock is 421 kilometres away from Coldstream, where I live.
So why am I writing a letter to their mayor?

Well, here is the story, originally from the Province newspaper, of White Rock Mayor Darryl Walker wanting an empty homes tax for his community...and...are you sitting down?

An EHTax that applies to commercial properties too.

Huh?
Commercial?

I'm speechless!

As though Mom and Pop stores haven't struggled enough with lease payments and/or property taxes that are ever increasing.

So how can a tax on empty commercial properties improve the availability of residential rental properties?

Here's my emailed letter to Mayor Walker...sent this morning.

"Dear Mayor Walker,

I read with considerable consternation in the Province on July 7^th that you hope to impose not only an empty homes tax, but wish to extend it to COMMERCIAL properties.

My business is not located in White Rock, but as an Okanagan small business owner I hope you will consider my opinion when pushing for the commercial extension.

I am convinced my opinion affects all business/commercial properties, regardless of location in the province.

While the EHT may have some effect on making homes available for renters—albeit less of a factor than a financial boon to governments’ general revenue—the same parameters do not apply to empty commercial buildings.  It was stated that “one empty commercial unit is one too many”.  That may well be, but a punitive tax will not spur owners of commercial properties.

Empty (smallish) commercial buildings are caused by a number of factors including:  society’s increasing penchant for big box stores and online purchasing.  The typical Mom and Pop stores that struggled financially over the last 15 or 20 years may be considering closing, as even a For Sale listing doesn’t garner much interest from merchants looking to set up shop in communities’ newly-defined “metro” areas.  Many communities augment their struggling “downtown” merchants’ businesses with Downtown Revitalization Projects, with varying degrees of success.  More and more shoppers state they are “busier than ever”, and when they do shop at a bricks and mortar business, they invariably head to malls and big box stores, chiefly because of available stock and free parking.  This at a time when many cities are introducing parking meters—many at 25 cents for 15 minutes!—along the old business frontage streets.

While the following isn’t a British Columbia example (excuse me for that, but I was recently going through Omak WA), this street view photo is dated September 2015.  On my recent trip through there, those exact same stores are now, four years later, 90-95 per cent vacant, with nary a For Sale sign.  They simply closed.  Why?  Because Wal-Mart was built across the highway.  The image I refer to is here:  https://www.google.com/maps/@48.4127931,-119.5282511,3a,37.5y,236.43h,88.17t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMl0GFVL-_bqRaRsipMxKZR8sdoaJaTQ4aax04!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMl0GFVL-_bqRaRsipMxKZR8sdoaJaTQ4aax04%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya221.32578-ro0-fo100!7i13312!8i6656

I’m sure you’ll agree that the little hardware store down the street where your parents shopped for nails and pliers when you were a child has faced almost insurmountable obstacles since then.  If the building was owned by the occupying merchant, he was faced with ever-increasing property taxes—all while watching his customer numbers decline.  If the building was leased, the merchant increasingly struggled to make the monthly lease payments.  All “old” downtown areas are faced with the same issues, and none of them relate to making rental properties more available for residential (let alone homeless) tenants.

In my community, the little hardware store closed years ago, was briefly occupied by a consignment shop, and then re-let to a “Dollar Store”.  Its days may also be numbered and again, open or closed, the commercial building has absolutely no impact—nor is it caused by the oft-maligned “foreign” owners—on rental vacancies for residential housing.

I am convinced government(s) need to reconsider including “commercial” properties with the new tax.  If I may say so, your comment “There are times I don’t think you should let the market be the be all and end all,” points to a solution that will only further aggravate the financial burden that governments impose.  It will have unintended consequences as struggling Mom and Pop business will simply have their decision to close shop made for them.

I hope you will reconsider your submission to the UBCM to amend the Charter to include commercial properties for the new tax.

Thank you for reading my letter.

Respectfully submitted,"


Will I hear back from the mayor?
It's unlikely.
But I hope he's open to the opinion of this businessperson.