I am very concerned about the amount of debt Canadians (both individuals and governments) are taking. I am equally concerned about the lack of retirement savings.  We are quickly headed to a cliff.  An average Canadian household owes $145 for every $100 it makes.  That’s insane!

This impacts local municipalities indirectly because number of seniors with inadequate savings in many municipalities is set to shoot up just as the number of people getting crushed under mounting debt is going up.  Here’s what I propose Federal government should do on the debt front:

1. Start tightening up the lending standard.  There was nothing wrong with requiring 20% down payment (or at least 10% for first-time home buyers). 
2. Actively encourage people to get fixed rate mortgages.  Fixed rates are less than 4% now and interest rates are at historic lows and can only go up.  Variable made sense a few years ago, but doesn’t any more.
3. When I was buying a house, banks approved me for an insane amount of mortgage.  I have no idea how I would afford that mortgage when rates started to rise again, but if we learned anything from the current financial markets induced recession then it’s that banks can’t always successfully regulate themselves.  I am sure a lot of people carry these mortgages and will find themselves crushed as their payments rise with interest rates.  A workaround is to approve people based on the higher of current or expected interest rates so they cannot borrow more than they can afford if rates are artificially low.

On the retirement front:

1. Set up a retirement plan parallel to CPP that doesn’t guarantee returns like the CPP does.  Require everyone to invest in it, but people are allowed to move money to their self-directed RRSP plans if they choose to do so (but the money stays locked in).  Fact is that people aren’t saving enough for their retirements.  Another fact is that as a society, we won’t let seniors starve to death because they weren’t financially prudent.  In that case people need a little nudge to save.   The goal isn’t to manage people’s investments, the goal is to say that people don’t have a choice to not save.  Either people will have to save for their old age themselves or they’ll become a burden on the society.  Except this time the society is getting overall older so it won’t be able to support all the seniors (the working people-to-seniors ratio is going up fast).  Australia has a very successful plan like this.
2. Lower marginal income tax (especially in provinces like Ontario).  I never believed the theory that high marginal taxes provide a disincentive to be more productive until I experienced it myself. 
3. Turn around society into an entrepreneurial and high-tech society . Governments, for some reason, continue to waste billions after billions of dollars to save manufacturing.  The trend will continue.  There is no reason why Apple, Google, GE, IBM and Microsoft could not have been home-grown Canadian companies.  Instead of providing subsidies to poorly run automakers of the past, why not encourage new start-ups working on electric cars? 

“It used to be that jobs and economic opportunities drew migrants.  No longer.  Today’s populations are more mobile than ever.  Armed with information and freed by technology, today’s migrants choose their communities much more carefully than ever before.  Therefore, communities must be savvy in the retention and attraction of people.  In fact, if communities don’t inspire their citizens, they run the risk of becoming failed communities.”
- From “Beyond Economic Survival” by Centre for Innovative & Entrepreneurial Leadership.  Taken from the Rurban Fringe.

Click here to expand the rest of this article

Walmart, Superstore and other retailers sell hardcover books for less than the cost.  Why?  It gets people to the store.  Specifically, it is better than selling toasters or socks at a discount because it gets the right customer in the store. Customers who buy hardcover books (which is arguably a luxury item) buy other items too. 

Does your municipality have a loss leader?  Something it offers in a discount to attract desirable businesses or residents?

Click here to expand the rest of this article

A city or a town is nothing less than a brand name.  Some brands matter while others do not. 

Why should Milton (or any town for that matter) care about its brand?  First, property values (of course). Second, strong brands create strong attachments and municipalities with stronger attachment experience better economic growth.  A recent study confirmed it.

Will Milton be a vibrant, growing brand in GTA or an irrelevant one?

I have been debating for several weeks whether to do this or not. I have been unsure about the format as well (should we collect signatures and take them to the Council, or have individuals e-mail them?)

Here is the issue :-

There are already thousands of homes west of the CN Rail track on Derry Road. The only practical way to get to the town is to go east on Derry, which requires crossing the tracks. Many trains take that track every day, causing a lot of traffic delay. Once traffic backs up, it takes a long time to clear, especially during rush hours. The situation is getting worse every day as more and more people move. We need an underpass on Derry NOW!

After a lot of thinking I have decided this :-

• Halton’s Regional Chair, Gary Carr (sort of the “boss” of the Council) himself admitted that the underpass “should have been done years ago” and was “an example of poor planning”. He also admitted that the development west of the rail tracks “should never have happened without a grade separation”. This tells me that the Regional Council agrees that we need the underpass NOW.
• In 2007 the Town of Milton passed a motion calling the Regional Council to finish the underpass. This tells me that the Milton Council agrees about the urgency.
• The project is still not expected to start until 2016, with an end date of 2017 (and many recent projects have been delayed, some by over a year). By then who knows what the population will be. This points to a disconnect between the first two bullets and this one.
• Our Councillors already know about the issue. However, Regional Councillors are mostly from Oakville and Burlington (2/3rd of the Council) and may not completely grasp the situation
• We tax-payers, as employers of Councillors, have the right to contact them.
• I debated whether I should just encourage people to contact our councillors (Barry Lee, Colin Best and the Mayor, Godon Krantz [who also sits on the Regional Council]). However, after I lot of thinking I concluded that these individuals already understand the situation and need the support of other Councillors in the Halton Council.
• If Councillors mind getting an e-mail from residents who pay their salaries then they do not deserve to be in the Council (my opinion of course, you may disagree)
• I thought about contacting the staff instead. I have found Milton staff to be very approachable and helpful. However, the Halton website has a department e-mail (MiltonRoads@Halton.ca), but not a point of contact (an individual with a name). Your e-mail (should you decide to use the form linked below) will go to the engineering department as well.
• Finally, it is the Council that will approve or disapprove this project. I feel that getting one e-mail from the tax-payer who suffers from this everyday is not too much to ask. Sure, an individual Councillor may get 100 e-mails, but that is still 1/100th of 10,000 residents impacted by this

Based on this, I reached the conclusion that I should ask residents to contact all Regional Councillors, asking them to move up the project date for the underpass.

To help residents, I set up an online form that will send the e-mail for you. In fact, I even put some sample messages so you dont even have to type a message, if you don’t want to. Honestly, if Mattamy can bombard them for its interest, I think we have the right to do the same for ours.

If you disagree then please do tell me why, because I may have missed something. This is a case where I feel it’s better to ask for forgiveness later, if they mind getting e-mails from residents. Otherwise please follow this link to the petition page . It has link to the online form, as well as individual contact information.

I appreciate your help :).
ps. I am willing to take the e-mail form down if most people find it inappropriate. Please leave a comment telling me if you disagree. Thanks.

For various reasons, details of which are not critical at this point, Halton is studying how to increase the population density in the region (in existing urban areas).

I’ve seen regions handle it really well and really poorly (and everything in between). For instance, Redmond severely restricts building heights (to 3 floors), and I hope Milton adopts a similar restriction. Bellevue has an amazingly well planned downtown core (not completely implemented yet). The residential areas are very walk-able, walking distance from movie theatres, restaurants, shopping, hotels etc. etc. etc. Not only that, but you get breathtaking views of the Cascades mountain ranges, as well as those of Seattle across Lake Washington. One place I don’t like is Mississauga. Specifically, I don’t like how Mississauga sometime gets tall residential buildings in the middle of otherwise low-density population areas.

Here is what I would like Milton to do :-

1. Restrict building heights outside of really high density areas (more on that later). I hate seeing stuff like this (notice some random buildings in otherwise low-density areas) :-

To my eyes they just look ugly. They are an eye sore. How can the town do it better? I offer you two places I liked like crazy :-

Medina: Every building there was exact same height (more or less) and sat at a same distance from the street. In fact, the frontage of each building was more or less same too :-

Notice how the ground level has a consistent design? Higher up each building had its own character. But due to the bottom floor design, you get something like this :-

These buildings all had stores at the ground floor, which gives walk-able shopping. Consistent layout gives a very aesthetically pleasing look. The pattern does break when it’s necessary to unblock views :-

The other place where I really enjoyed the layout was Munich, Germany. They also had walk-able streets with shopping at the ground floor :-

Notice they dont have gaps between buildings like in Medina, but buildings still have consistent heights.

If Milton does go with higher density areas, then this is what I’d like to see condos / apartments look like. I do not like single tall buildings that do not flow well with the area. Milton has an opportunity here to really define the character of its high density areas.