Mayoral candidate Dan Melanson says Greater Sudbury’s closest neighbour, North Bay, does a much better job of enticing investment and development.
He said it’s time the Nickel City took a page from the book of the Gateway City.
In a release to media, Melanson highlighted the many ways North Bay advertises that it is “open for business.”
“There are no industrial development charges in North Bay, they’ve implemented a 20-year commercial tax reduction strategy and offer a host of incentive programs,” Melanson said. “They created a Development Application Review Team (DART) to expedite the development program, which is why so many businesses in Greater Sudbury are looking to North Bay for their future expansions.”
Meanwhile, development charges and other costs in Sudbury are considerably higher than in North Bay, he said.
“Someone who wants to open an industrial business in Greater Sudbury will pay $3.50/square foot in property taxes, while the average in Ontario is $1.70/square foot, North Bay’s taxes are only $1.01/square foot. This explains all the shovel in the ground local news stories we read from North Bay,” Melanson said.
“We charge developers who own vacant land $3,859 an acre while North Bay charges $1,626 an acre. Why would anyone want to open an industrial park here when they have to pay twice as much as North Bay while they are waiting for tenants to fill the site?”
He also criticized the mayor and council, as well as the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation for how they handled Sudbury’s losing bid to host Noront Resources ferrochrome smelter.
“Would it not have been better for taxpayers to have paid to send experts in the field of mining and smelting to Finland to check out the ferrochrome smelter there, instead of the mayor, his chief of staff and an assortment of others, none of whom are experts in the mining industry? Instead we sent a delegation of neophytes to find out how a chromite smelter works and how it affects the environment.”
The full text of Melanson’s news release appears below
I have heard numerous times during conversations with the people here that, “Greater Sudbury is the best thing that ever happened to North Bay”. After listening to business owners expound on the benefits of opening a business in North Bay I wanted to know why and how they have managed to get so much new investment in their city.
In looking at the business costs in this city, when it comes to starting a commercial or industrial business, I can very well see that Greater Sudbury has put out a very large CLOSED for business sign on our door.
Today, we cannot compete with the incentives and the lower costs of doing business that North Bay offers its current and potential businesses. They welcome new business with open doors at city hall, expediting every process.
There are no industrial development charges in North Bay, they’ve implemented a 20-year commercial tax reduction strategy and offer a host of incentive programs. They created a Development Application Review Team (DART) to expedite the development program, which is why so many businesses in Greater Sudbury are looking to North Bay for their future expansions.
Here are some other facts from BMA Management Consulting Inc. that performs a comparative study of financial information on more than 100 municipalities across Ontario every year.
Someone who wants to open an industrial business in Greater Sudbury will pay $3.50/square foot in property taxes, while the average in Ontario is $1.70/square foot, North Bay’s taxes are only $1.01/square foot. This explains all the shovel in the ground local news stories we read from North Bay.
We charge developers who own vacant land $3,859 an acre while North Bay charges $1,626 an acre. Why would anyone want to open an industrial park here when they have to pay twice as much as North Bay while they are waiting for tenants to fill the site?
The differences in water and wastewater costs between the cities are another big factor. Industrial businesses use a lot of water — mining industries in particular. An industrial business, using 30,000 m3 in Greater Sudbury will pay $102,353 in water and wastewater taxes every year. In North Bay, that same business would only pay $76,370. For industries using 100,000 m3 of water or more, industries in Greater Sudbury will pay almost $100,000 more than North Bay per year.
Noront Resources’ Ferrochrome project is one of many examples of lost opportunities. While we didn’t lose out to North Bay, we did lose out to two other northern communities who worked hard to accommodate Noront Resources. Sudbury was axed as a contender because, according to Noront Resources, there were “significant capital costs, such as site preparation earthworks and the re-establishment of critical infrastructure.”
As a city, could we not have found a way to subsidize some of these costs as an incentive for Noront Resources to build here as other northern communities are doing?
Another reason Noront Resources rejected Greater Sudbury’s bid was because there was strong opposition to the project site chosen by the city. This was extremely unfortunate; we are the largest municipality in Ontario — there are many sites that could have been chosen that were located away from residential areas and the natural resources in the city’s chosen site that need to be protected.
This was a $1-billion project that would have created approximately 350 full time jobs and 150 part time jobs, and we lost it.
The chair of the GSDC said in a news article, “We will learn from this experience.” Greater Sudbury has been in the business of mining for over 130 years. We have built hundreds of mine sites, smelters, refineries and CO2 plants in those 130 years. Perhaps the city should have asked today’s experts who managed to build all these projects for their advice before submitting a losing bid.
Would it not have been better for taxpayers to have paid to send experts in the field of mining and smelting to Finland to check out the ferrochrome smelter there, instead of the mayor, his chief of staff and an assortment of others, none of whom are experts in the mining industry? Instead we sent a delegation of neophytes to find out how a chromite smelter works and how it affects the environment.
We cannot afford to miss any more opportunities. As mayor, I plan to revitalize and refocus our Greater Sudbury Development Corporation. Greater Sudbury’s future depends on taking that CLOSED for business sign off the door to prevent new investment from heading east on Highway 17 to North Bay.
Learn more about Melanson by visiting his election page on Sudbury.com.
