Strengthening Regional Partnerships: Economic Resilience in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to communications@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Mary W. Rowe: Hi everybody, it’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute. We’re so pleased to have our guests with us, they’re all busy because they’re running municipal governments. But what a really important topic for us to be having a conversation about, about what’s happening regionally and, in this particular case, this fantastically important region, the Great Lakes region, our partner for this, and I’m so appreciative to Philippe to do this with us because we wanted to, we’ve been trying to consistently raise the issues that, while there’s all sorts of discussion, I was trying to use the right noun, “animated discussion” about the relationship between Canada and the United States. At the ground level, lots of us talk to each other all the time about our common challenges, all of our common pursuits – how we make better places, how we make communities serve people better. And the 49th parallel in a lot of ways is a fairly arbitrary one for that discussion because we have lots and lots in common, whether you’re in a Canadian city or an American city, a Canadian town or an America town. And so, as I say, we’ve been trying to reemphasize that we have strong bonds and strong relationships. And so today this session is sponsored by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. And if you haven’t, I’m sure my colleagues will put into the chat some background on this fabulous organization, and the economic and social importance of seeing this region, seeing the ecology, in essence, of a region that involves natural assets, built-form assets, and human assets, and economic assets.

So I happen to be in Toronto. I flew in this morning from Ottawa. We at CUI always acknowledge our ancestral traditions and history, and so I encourage people to be putting that into the chat as we continue to come to terms with what truth and reconciliation needs to look like., in terms of Indigenous peoples. There’s a large First Minister’s First Nations conference happening today actually, in Canada, to talk about investments in infrastructure and the extent to which First Nations communities are comfortable with or not comfortable with the way in which the government is proceeding. So it is a topical thing always, but particularly today. And Toronto is home to many First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and covered by the Williams Treaty. So just to say that people often put into the chat what their ancestral territory is or any particular anecdote you want to provide about your ongoing work in terms of reconciliation with your Indigenous friends, colleagues, and neighbours.

So there’s quite a lot of information about the Great Lakes Initiative, which as I suggested, my colleagues will put into chat. But what we’re going to focus on today, having this conversation about people who are running municipal governments, mayors, what they’re seeing, what are the challenges that they’re focusing on, and they can speak to that any way they want. Mayor Evans, I’m going to start with you … welcome to CityTalk. Why don’t we start with you? We always go around at the beginning and just get people to give us a sort of orientation. So tell us a little bit about your town, your city, your community. Tell us what the big challenges are and what you see as the sort of future opportunities. And then I’ll bring on each of your colleagues as we go. We’ll do that around the sort of, I was going to say around the lakes. I will do that with the four of you that are on. And, then I will ask you some questions together. So why don’t you start? Fill us in.

Mayor Malik Evans: Well, look, I’m Mayor Malik Evans. I’m Mayor of a medium-sized city up here in upstate New York that borders Canada – Rochester, New York. We love Canada. Let’s be very clear about that. From my perspective, we rely on Canada. And I know that Canada relies on us. If I wanted to hop on a train or drive, I could be to Toronto, Niagara Falls. I could get to Toronto in less than two hours. And I could get to Niagara Falls in probably an hour and a half. So the connection between… all the Canadian cities, city of Rochester is extremely important. The challenges that we have, um, in our community are many. I mean, we’re an urban area so any of the urban challenges that you might hear on TV are challenges that we have here in Rochester, but more so than anything else, our greatest opportunity is our resources. Rochester is probably one of the only cities in the United States that has a lake, a river, a waterfall and a canal all within its city. So our opportunity has been us leveraging our resources as a place for not only economic development … that’s why our connections with the Great Lakes Initiative is so very important because we spend a lot of time talking about water. We are a part of, in the middle of a billion dollar… economic development projects all related to our water, be it replacing lead pipe with copper lines, building a high fall state park, building an aqueduct … all things that relate to harnessing the power of our water. A place where we have turned our back on for years in Rochester, the Erie Canal here is just now turning 200 years this year. So that’s where a lot of the opportunities are for us as it relates to economic development. But we’re also trying to continue to enhance our cultural offerings and activities here in our community, which has just finished our big Jazz Fest, our Fringe Fest, one of the largest in the world, is coming up here in September. So that’s been an opportunity. But a challenge has been the uncertainty around the economy. You get these fights back and forth around tariffs and what that’s going to mean from Rochester. We rely on commerce and people visiting here from other places, particularly Canada. And that uncertainty and this back and forth as it relates to that has been tough, but we’ve even launched a campaign through our “Visit Rochester”, where we are saying to our Canadian friends, “We love you, don’t stop coming here, keep coming here” and vice versa, we will keep coming where you are, despite whoever may be in charge at the federal level. The ties that bind us are extremely important. But that’s been our message in Rochester for years. You know, we have 13 sister cities around the world and we continue to try to have that person-to-person contact, that city-to city diplomacy. We think that that’s important, and we think that’s how we can overcome these challenges.

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah, I’m with you totally on the city-to-city diplomacy piece. I mean, this is … we often talk at CUI about how, you know, in Canada, the adage is the federal government has all of the power, the provincial or the state governments have all the money, and then the local governments have all the challenges. But they also have all … but they also have all of those solutions. And so I’m totally with you on this – that our way through, certainly we saw it during the pandemic, didn’t we? People invented all sorts of solutions on the ground and we had to improvise, and I feel like we’re back in that a moment where there are circumstances over which we don’t have very much control but we do have control over a number of things that you just articulated. I know Rochester well … I’m a London girl but my … but I’ve been in Toronto a lot of my life and then my sister was in Syracuse, so i used to drive across Rochester all the time, and of course you know Torontonians are in love with the idea of a ferry. Hope springs eternal, Mayor that someday there will be that Toronto/Rochester ferry idea that will be sustainable.

Mayor Malik Evans: Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s possible. I think someone from the private sector can come up with that idea. Because there’s so many great things in Toronto and so many folks from Toronto love coming here to our neighborhood of play. Some of our other … our Museum of Play and some of other assets that we have here. So hopefully, we’ll resurrect that idea and we can support it in a way that will make it sustainable.

Mary W. Rowe: You know, sometimes ideas just have to have the right time. You know they’re not … they’re not a bad idea, it’s just not quite the right time. I can see people in the chat already voicing …. And maybe there’s an entrepreneur on the chat, Mayor Evans, that’s going to come up with it, come and build that darn ferry route. Come on and do it. Come on, just do it, absolutely. We have to …

Mayor Malik Evans: The infrastructure is ready, we just need the person to do it. It’s been built now, we need someone to come.

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah exactly … I don’t know whether you’ve seen … there’s this very appealing advertisement, again it’ll be a challenge to staff if they can find it and post it on the chat … a number of people may have seen it but it’s come out of the Quebec Tourism Association it’s a wonderful very very very cute ad where a clerk is standing at her hotel greeting a tourist who’s arriving and he says something and she speaks to him in French and he speaks and he leans forward and says, “I don’t speak French” and then she speaks English and she says, “where are you from?” And he says USA … And she immediately pauses and starts to speak to him in a different kind of tone and puts her hand under the counter and presses a button and the counter opens and she walks around the counter. It’s quite artful the way it’s done. And she gives him a big hug and says, “Welcome”. And I think that’s all we all want to be doing is giving each other some big hugs. So let’s go to Portland. Can we hear from your colleague? We’ve got someone from the Sioux, someone from St. Catharines, and Portage, excuse me. I’m going to get the Americans in first. So Mayor Bonta, can you come on and join us?

Mayor Austin Bonta: Hey, yes, is everything coming through okay?

Mary W. Rowe:  Yeah, you look good. Thank you. Tell us what’s going on there.

Mayor Austin Bonta: Oh man, so the city of Portage, we are one of the …

Mary W. Rowe: How many people live there?

Mayor Austin Bonta: We’ve got about 40,000 people in our city and we’re growing. Historically, Portage has been the third largest city in what we call the Calumet region, commonly known as Northwest Indiana, but we’re really big on using the phrase Calumet … that actually goes back to the Calumet River that you know ran through … We are third largest city in the area, largest in our part of Portage County. We’re the home of the Port of Indiana, Burns Harbor, which is an international port, we’re very proud of that. We’re also the largest steel country with a US Steel and NLMK and Cleveland Cliffs having a presence all in our area. And that’s been tremendous for us. It’s a big source of our historical population and our historical economy. Portage is opportunities, but also the challenges that come with them is historically we were a steel town and a port town. And beyond that, we were very much a bedroom community. We have continued to grow in population, we’re one of the cities that in our area keeps growing in population. We’re on track for a thousand new homes to be built in the next year and a half, which is pretty incredible. People continue to come to Portage because it is safe and because it’s very affordable. At the same time that creates on big situations for us to look at. One is the fact is that we are increasingly a melting pot of people coming from all over the Chicago-land area, all over, the Midwest. Um, as we grow, I was actually recently at our Portage high school, talking to the football team, and I asked the question, how many of you guys were a new student, either in middle school or a new students in the community here in the high school and over 50% of the team stood up. And that was pretty incredible to me to see that we’re a growing city, but we also have the challenges of bringing people together and really integrating and making a strong community out of that. We are trying to make sure that we’re maintaining our public safety and that we are maintaining our affordability, which can be challenging at times. Some of the big things we’re working on to accomplish that is we’re trying to create more community events, including our annual, or I’m sorry, every summer we have our market on the square, which is a big thing every Friday where people come downtown with vendors and different things to do. There’s a beer garden, all of that. We’re trying to build up more fitness and recreation opportunities in the city. And then I mentioned earlier the sense of being a bedroom community. We’ve never had a very strong, true downtown. A lot of people live in Portage. They work in Portage, but historically they might drive 30, 20 minutes to nearby towns to go shop or to go dine. We have been actively working on building a downtown in our city. So, all that said, this is all being in a climate where the state of Indiana is in a process right now of changing its way that they fund cities. Right now, everybody’s concerned about property tax reform that was recently passed in our state and certainly in the short-term, all sorts of cities, including us, are trying to figure out the funding challenges that come with that property tax reform. But we’re also noting that Indiana is also going through a rather interesting time right now where essentially the state is transitioning from being a state where local communities are funded by property taxes to communities being funded by density or more income-based or user-fee, based on fees. Again, so there’s a lot going on. It’s kind of a big, uh, almost like a big puzzle we’re all in –  or maybe I think about it as like a game of Tetris. You have all these different pieces, you’re trying to make sure I’ll fit into something good by the end.

Mary W. Rowe: I’m fascinated to hear that you’re looking at reforming how municipalities are funded there. This is a constant issue in Canadian cities across the country, largely dependent on the property tax. And as you say, kind of a mixed blessing on the one hand, right? In the property taxes, it’s a reliable source of revenue, but it doesn’t grow with the economy. So I’m interested that Indiana has kind of bit the bullet on this, but you’re saying there’s lots of apprehension about whether the new deal will be better than the old deal.

Mayor Austin Bonta:  That’s a very much a concern. When I was running for mayor back in 2023, very much under what is, I would say the current and at … well at the time I would say the old system or what will soon be kind of the old system. I ran very much on the concern that the fact that our population in our city kept growing, which in many ways is a wonderful thing because of what it attracts – the people it brings together. But in Indiana, being such a property tax-based state, one of the big challenges is that you don’t actually as a city get a lot of more funding by having a lot more people. Population growth can actually be very much a challenge when you are … because the value of the properties and the property tax coming in doesn’t necessarily cover the amount of people you have to take care of. Indiana, what’s called Senate Enrolled Act 1, formerly SB-1, what that’s doing over a three-year period is it is on one hand, defunding cities from the concept of where the property taxes are coming in, but then it’s also creating a income tax availability for municipalities for the first time. Now that’s going to be its own big challenge politically, I’m sure in every city … figuring out the right thing to levy. But one of the things I’m trying to make sure I’m communicating to the community is the fact that one way or another, Indiana is making a transition, maybe a speedy transition from being a property tax based state to a density-based state when it comes to municipal funding. Whether or not it’s being done in the best way, whether or not it was handled in the smoothest approach, those are all other things. But that’s kind of the situation we’re in. But we’re not in this situation not as a stagnant city, we’re the situation as a growing city, which actually I think makes it more challenging. But I also think … it’s very important that we get this done right as a team.

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah, good for you. I mean, I appreciate the comment, though, about a stagnant city, you know, when everybody complains … I don’t know whether when we get all of us on and whether you get the same thing, Mayor Evans. But honestly, people want to complain about traffic, right? They just want … And post pandemic, you know, lots of construction projects were held back. Then suddenly they happen. And so everybody wants to complain about traffic. And I always want to say, you know, it’s actually a good problem to have like a thriving city. Look at the alternative. You could have a city with absolutely no traffic and nothing happening. But anyway, we can have that conversation going on. Thank you for telling me about the density-based funding change. And when we come back to you, I’m going to ask you – where are the people coming from if you’re growing? And I’m interested, Mayor Evans, is your population growing or is it slipping?

Mayor Malik Evans: We grew for the first time since our last census. I mean, you know, Rochester had a lot of challenges from the 60s on, and the last census, we actually gained population for the first time in probably 50 years.

Mary W. Rowe: Oh, so interesting. Okay. All right. Well, let’s come to the Canadian side now. And I’m going to go from one steel town to another one or adjacent to a steel town. Let’s go to the Mayor of St. Catharines because similar set of interesting developments to yours, Mayor Bonta, what St. Catharine is adjacent to Hamilton is going through. So welcome and nice to see you, Mayor Siscoe. Tell people about beautiful, lovely St. C atherines.

Mayor Mat Siscoe: I would love to. It’s one of my favorite things in the world to talk about. I am very blessed to be the Mayor of St. Catharines. We are considered a big city in the Ontario context. We’re part of the Ontario Big City Mayor’s Caucuses. And we have a population of about 150,000 at this point, which I always find kind of entertaining as a guy who’s moved around a lot in my life. I lived in a very small city in South Korea and it had three quarters of a million. So I think our context for big and small changes depending on where we are. I first wanted to just sort of throw to Mayor Evans, I will say, as a kid who grew up cheering against the Red Wings, but then now as an adult cheers for the Nighthawks, I’ve had a love, love-less relationship with Rochester, but I appreciate everything and me and my family basically lived at the Strong Museum of Play when the kids were younger and then earlier. So you’ve had plenty of tourism coming this way and I’m sure it’ll continue. But yes, St. Catharines is an interesting case. We are a very big industrial city. We’ve had an industrial base here for more than 100 years. General Motors was one of our biggest employers. It still is one of the largest employers, but obviously at a much smaller scale now than it was traditionally. We have seen some of the larger manufacturing has been hollowed out over the last 30 or 40 years, but we’ve also seen smaller scale industrial and manufacturing maintain and grow, so that’s an area that continues to be of strength. We really don’t have much, when it comes to industrial land in our community, we don’t a whole lot of it to go around because we are pretty full. One of the things we focused a lot more though on in the last couple of years is our marine sector, a recognition that the marine sector actually plays a huge role in the economy, not just in St. Catharines, but the whole Niagara Peninsula down here in southern Ontario. We have the Welland Canal, St. Catherine’s is actually the gateway to the rest of the Great Lakes. If you want to get past Lake Ontario, you’ve got to come through St. Catharines and the Welland Canal. And we’ve really tried to take a lead over the last couple of years when it comes to advocating for the marine sector, both through the work with the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities initiative, but also working on things like trying to convince the Ontario government to move forward … they have finally moved forward with a marine strategy in concert with the Marine Council here in Ontario – looking for ways to try and build on our marine heritage. Algoma Central is one of the largest shippers across the Great Lakes system. Their headquarters is close enough that I could actually throw a baseball from the roof of City Hall and hit their front door and I don’t have a great arm so it’s pretty close. We are a part of the Niagara region and as I said the marine sector is a big part of the economy here but more broadly than that we’ve become a destination for food and wine and tourism as well, obviously with Niagara Falls here. I always like to point out to folks, Niagara Falls is actually not the largest city in the Niagara region. It’s quite a bit … it’s only about two thirds the size of St. Catharines. St. Catharines is very much the capital city of Niagara. We have a number of wonderful wineries and the region as a whole has become very much a wine destination in Ontario and in Canada. We have some of the best ranked wineries in the country. So we like to push that a lot because we think that’s one of the reasons people like to come to us. From a city perspective, I mean, we’re really working through our biggest challenge, probably … it deals around infrastructure, you know, we are a water-based community. We’re right on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. We’re dealing with the same shoreline erosion problems everybody else has. But more than that, we’re seeing pretty drastic changes in our climate. We are seeing drastic changes in the size and scope of different weather events and our city is about 150 years old. It actually turns 150 next year. And I joke, sometimes when we’re taking pipes out of the ground to replace infrastructure, we’re finding pipes that are older than the city. And so we are really trying to figure out how to reckon with the infrastructure deficit that’s built up over the years. And I heard Mayor Bonta talking about, pushing for better ways to fund municipalities. We’ve been leading that chart here as well, because the reality is the Canadian system of funding municipalities is older than Confederation. And it was created at a time when, you know, municipal demands were significantly less and we’ve never really adapted the system and we see that most poignantly with infrastructure. We’re responsible at the municipal level for 65 percent of the infrastructure in Ontario and we collect at the city level uh between four and eight percent of taxes depending on whether you’re a one or a two tier municipality so we put a lot of work into that as well. But it doesn’t change the fact that St. Catharines is still a beautiful place to be. And I did want to make just one point, I heard the conversation about the ferry. We are actually working right now with a company called Hoverlink. They’re trying to set up a permanent hovercraft ferry from St. Catharine’s in the north end to Toronto. And if that works, I know their plan there to expand it across Lake Ontario and …

Mary W. Rowe: Just add a stop … just add a stop.

Mayor Mat Siscoe: The proprietor of the business has said very clearly once he gets the Niagara to Toronto running, Rochester is next on his list of places he wants to go.

Mary W. Rowe: That’s … you heard it here first, folks. OK, so let’s go even … it would be a hell of a ferry ride to go to our next city. But right on the water. Let’s hear from Mayor Shoemaker who’s in the Sault. Sault on the Canadian side, not Sault on the American side. Hello, Mayor Shoemaker …

Mayor Matthew Shoemaker: I almost turned my screen on when you said you were going to another Steel City after talking to Mayor Bonta.

Mary W. Rowe: Well, it could. I mean, exactly. It was it was 6 to one half dozen. Let’s go to you. Okay, another steel city. Go for it.

Mayor Matthew Shoemaker: Mayor Siscoe did me the honor of talking about Algoma Central, which is of course one of the founding corporations up here in Sault Ste. Marie and we’re in the Algoma district and Algoma Central which is, of course, now based in St. Catharines, Algoma Steel, St. Patrick’s Paper, they’re all things that were developed in the early industrial development of Sault St. Marie. So we are a city right on the junction of Lake Superior and Lake Huron. There’s are locks or a canal here that operate on the American side for industrial traffic, on the Canadian side for pleasure craft. There is an elevation difference in our city, if you’re in the West End, you’re roughly 30 feet higher in elevation than if you’re on the East End because Lake Superior is considerably higher than Lake Huron. We are here, you know, we’ve … since time immemorial say been a Indigenous trading hub because we are at the heart of the Great Lakes. You can get to us from the American Midwest, from Lake Michigan … You can to us from the East Coast from the lower lakes into Lake Huron, and you can get to us from the Canadian West through Lake Superior. So we are a trading hub for the region. But really our existence is, our modern existence, is founded on the vision of Francis Clerguee who developed Algoma Steel, who developed the Algoma Central Railway which became Algoma Central Corporation eventually, who developed the paper mill here and the hydroelectric dam. We are right on the border with our Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, neighbors right across the river, the St. Mary’s River. And so we have a very close relationship with them. They … for example, don’t have any municipal pools or indoor recreational facilities over there so they come over here for their recreational offerings. A lot of Canadians go over there because they have a very quaint, small Americana-type tourism town. So lots to enjoy with small town charm over there. We are one of, I think, one of … if not the only Canadian city where the Canadian side is way bigger than the American side. I think Port Huron and Sarnia, Port Huron is technically smaller but it’s within, you know, a couple thousand people. We are 78,000 people here in Sault Ontario and interestingly Mayor Evans said they’ve grown for the first time in 50 years, we’ve grown from the first time in 40 years, which dovetailed nicely with the beginning of my mayoralty. And we also are a place that is based on steel but similar to Mayor Bonta, looking to develop a port so that we can get our resources out to the places that buy it and the places to buy our steel are in the American Midwest and American West through Lake Superior into Duluth. So we are in the early stages of developing a port which has been you know talked about also probably for about 50 years and never really hit the ground on it, but with this re-engaged provincial and federal government on developing, you know, large infrastructure projects or projects that will help accelerate the development of the Canadian economy, we think it’s … the timing is also hitting at the right spot. I think it was you, Mary, who said every idea just needs the right time. And the port idea seems to be getting off the ground nicely, more recently. So that’s a little rundown on the Sault.

Mary W. Rowe: Okay, well let’s let me just ask Wendy, our producer, to put us all on the screen. I always like the Hollywood Squares thing. I’m of a particular generation that I know the Hollywood Squares. I just heard Mayor Evans, he’s old enough to remember Hollywood Squares too, and you know, where I can see everybody at the same time because … and just open your mics, don’t worry about muting because that just makes it easier. You know, what’s interesting to me to hear the four of you talking, everybody is saying the “I word”, infrastructure. And I’m interested about, you know, we’re all of a certain age, your cities are all of certain ages. I think one of you said it’s older … Maybe it was you, Mayor Siscoe, you said that your infrastructure, your pipes are older than the confederation is, it’s old, and everything is needing replenishment. And I am interested, how are each of you prioritizing that with your councils, I guess with your provincial or state governments, and then with your national governments? And are you working with the private sector? So I’ll start with you, Mayor Evans. I mean, how much of an uphill battle, is it? In many ways, you know, you guys have mentioned really iconic infrastructure, the Erie Canal, the Welland Canal. These are iconic, country building investments that we knew how to do a century or two ago. How do you make the case for the amount of investment you know you need? Mayor Evans, first to you.

Mayor Malik Evans: Well, you know, I’m a former banker, so I always look at, I always look at the capital stack on how are you going to be able to pay for any of this stuff? Uh, we were blessed under the Biden administration to get, um, an influx of class, which was called ARPA investments. And we, um prioritized those, a lot of those ARPA investments to infrastructure. Because we knew that those weren’t going to be ongoing source of revenue that we were going to get on a regular basis. So, um I’ve set a goal to replace every single lead pipe in the city of Rochester by 2030 and, uh, just a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated our 10,000th pipe. And we believe that we will be able to do that by 2030 because this infrastructure is just so old in our cities and it actually in the long term cost us more money in health, as well, if you have lead pipes that’s not good for health but if you also have old pipes throughout the rest of the infrastructure you have these water main breaks which happen in cities across America probably every … a water main breaks. So we really prioritize that type of infrastructure. But we also partner with the state. Rochester was founded on the banks of the High Falls and we worked with New York State to make the High Falls a state park. So it’s going to be the only second or third urban state park in all of New York state. And we work with the private sector in terms of cleaning it up. Our utility was responsible for a lot of the pollution. So we worked with them on the cleanup, the acquisition of some of the properties that were there, the City of Rochester did that. And then the state, we worked with them on the infrastructure piece to make the state back to its original ecological habitat. We’re working with the federal government as well as the state on our aqueduct project, which is a very, very ambitious project that’s going to expose the river, which runs through the middle of downtown … and the Genesee River is one of few rivers in the world, similar to the Nile River that actually flows backwards. So we think that that is a great modern marvel of infrastructure that is also a great economic development tool. So we’ve worked with various levels of government. We still don’t know how our federal government will change as it relates to infrastructure. Last year, in the last two years, we’ve had huge infrastructure investments in the United States. And a lot of that benefited cities and towns across the country. And our hope is that those things will continue to be funded, continue to be effective, but the jury is still out on that. And I don’t need to go into it. You can watch the local news right now, your local news if you’re in Canada and what’s being said about the United States right now as it relates to rescission and clawing back dollars that have already been appropriated. But we’re going to continue to invest in the local level here through bonding and other acts, that we can to get revenue and then continue to hope that our state government continues to support us at all. But we’ve been able to try to put the capital stack together by focusing on federal, state, local, as well as the private sector to help us to be able to get the resources we need in order to move our projects forward from an infrastructure perspective.

Mary W. Rowe: It’s interesting, and just as you’ve been doing this, Mayor Shoemaker has had to go and tether to his phone because his power’s gone off and nice to see him back. But isn’t this just the moment we’re in, where aging infrastructure, I mean, we can see it in the risks that we see in Northern communities around fires. You know, the necessary resilience infrastructure that we’re all … we’re aging, the climate is changing, whether you agree with it or not, but there are a bunch of factors that are contributing to making us more vulnerable. And I’m interested in who else wants to weigh in on this. Maybe I’ll go to you, Mayor Bonta, that the kinds of ways in which you’re exploring how can you invest. And I am interested Mayor Evans has been able to rally his council to say, “well, we’re going to do it pipe by pipe by pipe. Talk to me about your experience and what you’re finding, go ahead.

Mayor Austin Bonta: Oh, well, to start, I mean, my very first year as mayor last year, I ran into a situation that I don’t think any mayor wants to be in, which is that I had just been elected and it came to the attention that we needed to raise our sewer rates, um, to put it really simply – Portage is a bit of a younger city compared to some of the other cities in our area and along the Great Lakes, we were founded in 1959 and we went from being a town to a city by 1967. Now the blessing is we were able to grow very fast because, uh, unlike some cities where, you know, a sewer system would be built, you know, gradually over time, as it grew, basically we had our borders, you knows, set in the 70s, they built a sewer system all over the main road. So neighborhoods could pop up everywhere, because they already had that sewer access. The trouble was, is that over a 40-year period, there was a lot of delayed or undone maintenance and repairs that were needed to the sewer system, essentially kicking the can down the road. I unfortunately came in and found that we were no longer in a spot where the can could be kicked any further. We were looking at … we knew we’d be somewhere between 30 to 40 million dollars in repairs was going to be necessary to our sewer system in order to make the needed repairs and also increase the capacity to match how much the city had grown to. It was beyond just a question of how much more do we want the city to grow. It’s already grown past a point that our system could handle. Now, we were able to take advantage of the SRF that’s the State Revolving Loan Funds to be able to qualify for what ended up being $35 million of repairs and upgrades that includes upgrades to our water treatment plant, being able to fix our pipes to prevent the issue of water leaking out, and also just building a new interceptor that’s going to be able to increase the capacity to our system. But we had to deal with the fact that in order to be able to make those payments and to be able to maintain operations with our plant, we had to put ourselves in a position where we raised the rate. So we came in last year with the sewer rate being $36.50. We had to set up a plan to get it to $53. Now to give you an idea, the average sewer bill in Indiana is $72. [Wow]. So part of the struggle is that for a long time it was very convenient to be $36.50 when everybody else around the state is pulling around $70 to $72. That was a big piece of communication to the residents. The council understood what was important was that we had to have our community informed about why we were doing this, especially people who lived there for a long time and who did not understand that the low costs we were enjoying were at the expense of the system itself getting the repairs that it needed. So now I’m quite confident and it’s been great because I used to be a teacher before I was the mayor and I used to compare the sewer system to kind of like being a principal in a school. If you don’t handle it right, kids are only going to see you when they’re in trouble. And we needed to show off the infrastructure work that we’re doing that you don’t always see underground and how important that is. Another piece, I don’t want to take up too much time. I know we got other mayors here, but when it comes to our city’s comprehensive plan, which we’re in getting ready to change around, moving from a more sprawl-based, just a… What do you call it, large homes, increasingly going south and going east as the city expands, we’re trying to shift to creating more higher density pockets within our city. We have an area on the north end of our city, it’s a fascinating place with over 250 acres of undeveloped land to the north is a train station to the south is #94 highway that 44 million people drive past every year. And it has a waterway that connects to Lake Michigan running through it. Um, this is an area where we could have a very smart, planned, high density development. And the thing that that matters for us is that when we talk about encouraging growth in our city, we want it to be smart growth that we can maintain … a road that costs $2 million to maintain, it’s going to cost $2,000,000 is whether five people live on it or whether 50 people live. So you want to think about how you’re getting the most bang for that buck when it comes to infrastructure for things like roads.

Mary W. Rowe: It’s interesting to me, part of the challenge is, how do we actually bundle these investments together? So when you’re starting to talk about, we all know that, and certainly I’d be interested here from our American colleagues in Canada, it’s all about housing, housing, housing, and one of the concerns that everyone is raising is you can’t just build housing. You’ve got to have infrastructure along with it. And could we also be doing, as you just suggested, Mayor Bonta, investing in places, in making the places more resilient. So when look at your other priorities, How do you address that? Mayor Siscoe, how do you do it? You’ve got to deal with a province and a national government. And I’m really interested, Mayor Evans, you had a federal government that doubled down on infrastructure and now you’re in the spot you’re in … So you first Mayor Siskoe and then we’ll come to Mayor Evans and I’m just going to put my screen on mute and grab a glass of water so that I don’t start to cough again. Go ahead Mayor Siscoe.

Mayor Mat Siscoe: Well, I mean, I’m hopeful that with what is ostensibly, they call themselves a new government in Ottawa, that we’re going to see a recommitment to infrastructure in the coming months. I think that’s necessary. I don’t think we’re all that different from other communities in Southern Ontario or across the country. When I talk to my colleagues, we’re are all facing the same infrastructure challenges. One of the things that I did, I was the budget chair before I came in as the mayor and as the budget chair, we instituted an infrastructure levy, which is over and above our property tax. It’s relatively small, but …

Mary W. Rowe: How did you do that? How did you do it?

Mayor Mat Siscoe: We gridded our teeth in the first year of a mandate and we brought in an infrastructure levy and explained to the community  – this is our infrastructure gap. and we need to … this has always been my piece … You know as much as I think we carry too much of the infrastructure burden on it as a municipality We have to show to those other levels of government. Listen, we have skin in this game as well. We’re not asking for a handout … We’re saying give us a billion dollars to deal with all of our problems. We’ll tax as well. We will go to the well but we need help because some of these infrastructure outlays are just too much. In St. Catharines, when I was first selected in 2010 as the City Councilor, we had a $140 million infrastructure deficit. As of the most recent asset management plan last month, we’re up to about $780 million. In addition to that, our region, which the Niagara region is responsible for half of the infrastructure in town, probably another billion dollars worth of infrastructure. So we know there’s a gap. We know that that gap is the reason why some of this housing can’t get built. We need a new wastewater treatment plant in Niagara Falls, which will take some of the load off of the wastewater treatment plant in my community. That’s a $400 million lift. And if it’s not built …

Mary W. Rowe: I’m going to stop you. I know this is the way you guys think. I hear the numbers. I hear how excited you are about pipes and bridges and investments, but I’ve got to move us to what’s the new deal we’re going to try to strike? Because it’s not just one kind of infrastructure. That’s what I’m hearing. And I’m hearing that there are … maybe you have to raise property taxes, maybe you do a levy. What are the other options? Because guys, you’re sitting on assets that need to have investment. What’s the big idea that’s going to get us to a place where you’re not having to nickel and dime it like this. Who’s got a big idea for us? Somebody?

Mayor Austin Bonta: So one of the things that we’re … I mentioned that Indiana is going through a process right now of the state basically changing maybe faster than some people like, or maybe faster than we’re prepared for … from a property tax system to a density based system. I know in our case, and I’m not sure if there’s an equivalent in Canada, and if there is, and it’s called the same thing, I apologize too, but in Indiana, we have what’s called Redevelopment Commissions, also called Allocation Areas, what’s called tax increment financing.

Mary W. Rowe: I think your Canadian colleagues are listening very carefully. So tell us, keep going. What do they do?

Mayor Austin Bonta: To put it really simply, um, when a redevelopment commission in an Indiana municipality designates an allocation area, what some people colloquially call a TIF district, you’re basically creating an area where the property taxpayers in that, they are paying the same rate as everyone else in the community, but the funding of it … now this is a little bit tricky because you have to understand Indiana’s growth quotient, the municipalities …

Mary W. Rowe: You’ve got to try to just move this up one level of granularity, make it a little simpler.

Mayor Austin Bonta: I mean, to put it real simple, it doesn’t, it’s like making a new city, if you will, for tax purposes in an undeveloped area where that redevelopment commission receives the tax payments that come in. So whereas if something’s not in a TIF district, the city overall is only going to get so much money. But by having an area set up, if there’s growth, you could have a million dollars coming in to that redeveloping commission. And then by state law, that can be spent on different things. Indiana recently made a change in 2019 that allows us to spend that on public safety. So in our case, we have five neighborhoods coming in. We’re in the process of putting those into TIF districts. That allows us over time to generate revenue that we can use for our public safety, so in a way it’s like an indirect public safety tax.

Mary W. Rowe: So interesting for me that you’ve got this other kind of device and I’m sure Mayor Shoemaker and Mayor Siscoe are have spent time trying to advocate with their colleagues that maybe Canadian cities need a similar kind of mechanism. Is this something that you guys talk about at the Great Lakes table. Do you talk about how you fund infrastructure?

Mayor Mat Siscoe: Yeah, I mean, to be completely honest, that’s one of the benefits of bringing together all the municipal and the tribal and First Nations leaders is everybody’s got a slightly different take on how to do things. Every state and every province is different.

And so we share the mechanisms because ultimately, if Mayor Bonta’s got a good idea down in Indiana, I’m going to bring it to the Premier in Ontario, because we need as many tools as we can. And your point, Mary, like the mechanisms we have right now aren’t enough. You can’t just keep going back to property tax. It doesn’t work.

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah, yeah. So can we go to the other topic, which Mayor Evans introduced right off the top? And, you know, I’m interested, how are you guys addressing the economic uncertainty? We at CUI, we work with Main Street businesses in downtowns all the time. One of you was saying you don’t really have a downtown, you’re trying to foster a downtown. I know downtown Rochester well. How are you, as municipal leaders, finding ways to support your local businesses? Tell me what you can do in this particularly odd time. Mayor Evans, you first.

Mayor Malik Evans: I think for us, we rely on public-private partnerships. We have, for example, here in Rochester, be it the Chamber of Commerce or our Rochester Downtown Development Corporation or other organizations like that, we’re partnering with them. We have an innovation zone in downtown that we have designated, and that is made up of private companies that we also support, our Greater Rochester Enterprise. What we find is that we have to come together from cross sectors to really try to solve a lot of the challenges that we have. Just yesterday I convened a group that I call my Rock Resilience Roundtable out of changes that we had at the federal government particularly as it relates to different funding to make sure that the momentum that we’ve started in Rochester is not stalled amidst uncertainty because while elected officials and politicians talk about all the ways in which they’re going to try to stop progress, there are residents that are still saying, wait a minute, you promised us progress. We don’t care about what’s happening at the federal level or anywhere else. You need to move the ball forward. And the way to do that is to try to pull together groups of people. And that’s, and that’s what we have attempted to do to try and make sure that we support particularly small business and continue to attract business, uh businesses in our community. And that is ….

Mary W. Rowe: What kinds of folks sit on that resilience roundtable? What kinds?

Mayor Malik Evans: So, we have both business leaders, nonprofit executives, other levels of government, but it’s just a broad cross section of anybody that might be affected from changes at the federal level.

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah. And do you lead it? Does the mayor lead it?

Mayor Malik Evans: I lead it. I invite the folks to attend, and it’s been very effective for us. We have different subcommittees that go out and work in between the meetings, and that’s important because everyone needs to know that they are not alone on an island. The only way that you can do this, I often say that it’s “we, not me”. A leader, a mayor cannot do this alone, and one of the powers that does not cost a dime that a mayor has, is the power of convening and you have the bully pulpit, and you can bring people together and you get all the innovative ideas to be able to move the ball forward. And that’s how a lot of these, I think that’s a lot our cities will be saved. And I think, that’s what mayors in the United States are also seeing, and in Canada. I think these cross sector collaborations, but also collaborating with other mayors will allow us to weather this uncertainty that we’re seeing. And this is all manufactured uncertainty, by the way. This is not like, it’s not like it just came upon by accident. We are sometimes creating the storm, which, you know, this is not a natural disaster that just happens to spring up out of the earth or come out of the sky.

Mary W. Rowe: Mayor Shoemaker, can I hear from you what kind of measures you’re able to take in the Sault in terms of supporting small businesses?

Mayor Matthew Shoemaker: Yeah, it’s honestly … it’s a real challenge given the limited availability of resources. I think that Mayor Evans hit the nail on the head there. It’s the power to convene, the power to work with public-private partnerships, but also public-public partnerships. I find a lot of the institutions in town are all facing the same issues, right? The hospital’s having a hard time recruiting physicians and that’s hurting community economic development. The university, the changes to the immigration system recently in Canada have resulted in the universities now looking to partners and we need more daycare spaces. So, we’re now looking at the college as a location for potential daycare spaces. The YMCA recently almost went belly up in our community and that was a large donor in town that helped buy the building, the city backstopped the lease so that the organization could continue to operate because otherwise we’re going to fall into a system where, you know, if there’s no YMCA that’s going to mean probably more substance abuse, more kids losing a space, a safe space where they can go and work out or join an activity or get a life skill and then end up needing more social supports that we’re struggling to pay for at the provincial level and the federal level anyways, right? So we are working through our physician recruitment committee with the hospital, we’re working with the college for the daycare spaces, we’re working with private sector on derelict buildings in town, we are buying them in partnership, having them tear them down and redevelop them, and we’re looking at the ROI in terms of years, not in terms of days or weeks or months, right? The city’s got the…

Mary W. Rowe: Have you got enough money? It sounds like you’re doing a lot.

Mayor Matthew Shoemaker: We’re growing … similar to Mayor Bonta. We’re strategically investing though. I mean we’re getting rid of things that we had done in the past. We were in the provision of daycare for 35 years directly and we stopped doing that because it was costing more to provide it as a municipality than the private sector could do it. We reduced the numbers on our fire department several years ago and that was like … I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone, but these are the types of things that we had to take a look at, make sure that the city was providing the right services, partnering with others on the right services, and trying to make sure the necessary supports and offerings are there to continue to grow our city.

Mary W. Rowe: So convening, bully pulpit, being resourceful about the assets you’ve got and whether you can redeploy them or in some other way. Any other tips in terms of how to support downtown’s local businesses continuing to Mayor Bonta then Mayor Siscoe.

Mayor Austin Bonta: I would say as much as you can – bring people where you want things to be. I mentioned about this downtown, we have the area that’s the middle of the city, which we intend to be where our downtown grows. We’ve been very strategic about having a lot of our city events, whether that’s our weekly, you know, market on the square, which is like a small fair, you know, town thing. We had a-

Mary W. Rowe: You’re concentrating …

Mayor Austin Bonta: I’m not the biggest fan of rap music, nothing against it. It’s just not what I was raised with, but we had a 3-6 Mafia come last summer. They brought 4,000 people into our downtown area. This summer, there was a big, uh, rock concert with a number of different bands that came through that brought near about 3000 people in, but each time that we’re able to show that we can bring a large number of people to this downtown spot, that’s how you start having a restauranteur or a shop owner or a potential shop owner say, “Hey, maybe this is where we want to be … where all the people are going”. The other thing that I try to use, that bully pulpit, I mean, I’ve got about 30,000 people that follow me on social media. I’ll go to a local business in town, say, “hey, we went to this hot dog stand that’s actually been here for 50 years”, but there’s people who are like, I never knew that was up there. It’s on the far north end. They started getting more people coming. We celebrated when a new spice store opened up in the city. And now people suddenly aren’t driving out to another town to go and get spices, they’ve got something here. We don’t live so much in an age where the neighborhood gossip is going to be able to let people know what’s happening in town. A lot of that has moved online. Um, sometimes people ask …

Mary W. Rowe: It’s a kind of gossip. We still gossip, just saying.

Mayor Austin Bonta: Yes, but the location has changed. They once asked John Dillinger, why do you rob banks? And John Dillinger said “that’s where they keep the money”. People ask me, why are you on social media so much Mayor Bonta? I’m like, well, because that’s what all the people are. It’s where information spreads and if I’m not careful misinformation spreads, let’s get the news we want out there too.

Mary W. Rowe: Go ahead, Mayor Siscoe, anything to add in terms of supporting small business.

Mayor Mat Siscoe: And we reframed some of our procurement rules and we tried to try to focus on buying local and we encouraged the provincial government to change the rules around that. One of the other things we did, we went out to the community and specifically through a couple of initiatives through my office, like listen, what roadblocks are we putting in place that in yesteryear were annoyances but now are impediments because my community – $3 billion worth of exports across the river. So we need to be helping those businesses while we’re waiting to figure out how this all goes, and we might be waiting up to four years, okay, well then let’s figure out how to make it cheaper for you to be doing business in town and if there’s something that the city or the region are causing to be a pinch point, well then, let’s take care of that. And we’ve gotten some good reviews from local businesses. We have to constantly be going back to the business community though, because ultimately they’re going to know what they need to survive. And we’re trying to encourage investment because one of the things we saw, even with businesses that aren’t export-based, they shut everything down back in January because they were terrified about how this trade war would affect them. Once you zero out the investment of non-related businesses, you have a real serious problem. And I think the messaging has been good because it looks to me, at least in Ontario and Canada, we seem to have avoided a recession to this point, knock on wood, but I think all the municipalities have to be doing the same things.

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. It’s so interesting to me to hear the four of you and how you’re just doubling down. We’re going to invest in infrastructure, we’re going to convene all the right partners, we are going to try to stay somewhat distanced from all the other nonsense that’s going on around us. And it’s the old story, you know, stick to your knitting. Just last comments as we’re rounding out. A priority for you, let’s say, for the next six months. What’s the number one priority? You first, Mayor Evans …

Mayor Malik Evans: I mean, I think the next priority for the next six months is to continue what we started, to not go backwards. I was raised to finish with what your start. And we have dozens and dozens of large infrastructure projects that really are also economic development projects that we want to try to continue.

Mary W. Rowe: Mayor Siscoe …

Mayor Mat Siscoe: We started a process, what we’re calling the neighborhood investment plan. It feeds off of that going to the community. What do we need to change through our planning department or building services department? I’ve committed to the communities that that’s going to be coming back in Q4. So the next six months are getting that work done and being able to present it to the committee as a coherent plan of how we’re going to make it easier to do business.

Mary W. Rowe: That’s very tangible. That’s great, Mayor Bonta …

Mayor Austin Bonta: So maybe a bit more abstract just for the purpose of time, but with Indiana going through really a three-year transition with how municipalities are funded, the next two years is crucial for us that we financially stay afloat. So when it comes to looking at different city contracts, looking at the different ways our budget has been historically set up, some of that is no longer sustainable in the transition. And this is the right time to be making some big changes now so we’re ready for the new system. So a big part of the next two months for me is going to be the new city budget for 2026 and explaining to the council and the community why we’re, quite frankly, changing some things we’ve done for a very long time, but are no longer sustainable with the new funding mechanisms that we have coming in.

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah, you’ve got some structural things to be thinking. Last word to you, Mayor Shoemaker, you got back just in time.

Mayor Matthew Shoemaker: I was … there we go … old infrastructure, like you said, right?

Mary W. Rowe: Yeah, yeah exactly.

Mayor Matthew Shoemaker: The priority is working on the port because our steel plant is converting from coal-based or blast furnace-based steelmaking, I know Mayor Bonta will understand this, to an electric-based steelmaking or an electric arc furnace. And so in the transition of that type of steelmaking it sheds a bunch of jobs in the primary side of the steel plant. So you’re no longer unloading things or raw materials from the ships, putting them into a blast furnace and then getting liquid iron out of it. You’re starting with iron pellets and then cutting out a significant number of the jobs that are on the primary side of steel making. So in order to salvage some of those community jobs, we’re looking at the port as an opportunity to increase our labor force in another skilled area that steel plant workers could transition to and have the right skill set to be able to go to.

Mary W. Rowe: Well, I mean, you guys are stewarding economies in motion in front of our very eyes and new people moving in and new opportunities, new challenges, obviously, lots of resilience challenges. So listen, thanks so much for taking the time to share with us what’s working and what’s not, what you are focusing on, what you’re doubling down on. And I appreciate you’re all busy. But what a great vision you’ve given for us about local leadership. Really wonderful to hear four folks like you so determined to serve the public good. So thank you for being with us on CityTalk, really great to meet you Mayor Evans, Mayor Bonta, Mayor Shoemaker, and Mayor Siscoe. And we’re all going to go this weekend and embrace whatever the connective tissues we have across that 49th parallel. So wherever’s closest, CityTalkers, just think about that and be in sync with your compatriots on the other side of the border. We just launched today, relaunched, the

CityTalk podcast series. It’s in the chat. It’s about placemaking and it’s about festivals. And we all know about this. We know the good and the bad and the ugly and the fantastic of festivals. So it’s about that. And also we just published a report a couple of weeks ago about the future of faith spaces in Main Streets. So thanks gang for being part of us,a part with us. We’ll see you in a month from now … The next CityTalk Live. And again, thanks. I hope you get some cool weather along with all the great projects you’re building. Lovely to meet you and happy you’re here.