We E-mailed 224 Municipalities Asking For Data

They have it and we want to collect it so that everyone can learn from it

Illustarion by Frank Ferrao

Dear reader,

Mike Moffatt needs more data because he is a data monster.

Starting a little over a week ago, we at the Missing Middle Initiative emailed 224 municipalities in Ontario and politely asked them to provide us with nearly three decades’ worth of information on development charges.

What would possess us to do this?

I’m going to pause here so that you can get yourself a cup of coffee. No one should have to read about the Development Charges Act without being properly caffeinated.

You should know that Development Charges Act, 1997 requires Ontario municipalities to make development charge-related information, such as background studies, publicly available on their website. However, the act doesn’t specify how they should present the information, so documents can often be buried in staff reports or other inaccessible parts of their sites, if it is available at all. Development charge rates have skyrocketed over the last 25 years, often changing multiple times a year, but most municipalities only have a few years’ worth of documents available online. As a result, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to compare DC information from different municipalities over time. This means no one knows who is charging what or how fast a municipality has increased their development charges without doing a lot of digging.¹ The cities can’t learn from each other. No one can get a gold star (from Mike) for building at scale without exorbitantly raising development fees, and no one can be blamed for charging exorbitant taxes and thus preventing home building from keeping pace with population growth. The Missing Middle Initiative is trying to change this.²

Our progress to date

We started this project by first visiting municipal websites and collecting what data we could, but not a single one had all of this information; in fact, some municipalities did not even have the bare minimum required by law.

Because no municipality (that we could find) has a complete set of documents on their website, we sent 224 emails, to be exact, asking for the data we need.³

We knew what we were requesting was a big ask, and it would take a fair bit of effort for municipalities to collect this. We have received a few helpful responses. And some others, that can only be described politely as “fun”.

Today, I’m sharing some of the fun ones. I’m paraphrasing here, but not by much⁴:

• Look at our website. (The website invariably only contains a couple of years of information)

• I’m away. Contact someone else (someone else’s email is only sometimes provided.)

• You need to file a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for that information; here’s a link.

• Here are some links, find it yourself or do an FOI but not until you've tried to find it yourself.

• We don't keep historical data on our site, but we can look up the information and send it to you. It will cost $519, and the fastest we can turn it around is 3 weeks. Do you still want us to do it?

The vast majority have not responded and do not have any autoresponse so it’s anyone's guess when and if we’ll get a response, let alone the data we need.

In my twenty-plus years as a journalist I’ve come to understand the sharing of data is not something Canada does well. One might call Canada abysmal at collecting and sharing information. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve started to research a topic, from how illegal guns get into Canada to how much money Toronto schools collect from fundraising, to find out that this information either isn’t collected or isn’t publicly available without hours of work. This development charge data is falling solidly into the second category.

It’s still early days, but the fact that six municipalities immediately replied to me to tell me to file an FOI conveys to me the message that cities understand they need to do this but don’t want to, so they won't unless we make them.

Why should you care that it’s difficult to collect a bunch of boring data and documents? Because you pay, through your tax dollars, for that data to be available, and I believe you would benefit greatly from that data being usable. If we can collect all of this information, not only will we be able better to understand the causes of Ontario’s skyrocketing development charges, but municipalities will also be able to learn from each other's successes and hopefully avoid the most egregious errors. Information is power. Also, it seems clear to me that the intent of the public disclosure clauses in the Development Charges Act exists because someone smart realized that what gets measured gets done. The municipalities have this information. Let's let everyone look at it and learn from it.

Best wishes and warm regards,

Meredith

1. There is a provincial Financial Information Return website with some additional development charge information, though the data available on the site has some substantial limitations, which we’ll discuss in a future post.

2. Specifically, we’re creating a free-to-use, publicly accessible repository of PDFs sorted by municipality and year. These PDFs contain documents related to development charges and other municipal fees, including, but not limited to, development charge fee pamphlets, by-laws, background studies, treasurer’s statements, and other relevant information. We’re starting with Ontario, then expanding into other provinces (noting that systems and requirements differ substantially across provinces), and focusing on the period 2000 to the present.

3. Here’s the content of the e-mail we sent:

We're looking to get the following documents related to development charges to add to our repository. We would greatly appreciate your support and would like to request the following:

1. The current and all historically available Development Charge Pamphlets were prepared under O.Reg 82/98, section 14 of the Development Charges Act.

2. All historically available Treasures Statements for development charge reserve funds which were prepared under section 43 of the Development Charges Act.

3. The current and all historical development charge background studies which were prepared under section 10 of the Development Charges Act.

4. All historically available development charge by-laws, including amendments.

Ideally, we would like documents as far back as 1998, when the Development Charges Act was first deployed. However, if your municipality adopted development charges after 1998, we would like documents from the earliest possible date.

We recognize some of the information in this request may be partially available through various meeting minutes or dedicated web pages. However, these sources do not always provide the complete historical datasets that we are seeking. Therefore, your assistance in gathering them to the fullest historical extent possible would be greatly appreciated.

4. Here are some of the exact quotes of responses we received.

• “As your request is mainly for records that are not publicly accessible, you will be required to submit your request under The Municipal Freedom of Information and Protect of Privacy Act (MFIPPA) and pay the $5.00 application fee.”

• “We would have records prior to 2018, however, you would have to submit a MFIPPA request for those records as they are not publicly accessible.”

• “As this is a unique request, we request that you go through the Freedom of Information process to obtain the requested records. I have attached the freedom of information access request form that can be completed and returned to me directly by email. There is a $5.00 application fee, which can be paid over the phone via credit card by calling [REDACTED].”

• “We wish to direct you to [REDACTED]’s Freedom of Information website page to request the information, which page you can find [REDACTED].”

• “Please use the link below to submit a Freedom of Information request:”

• “[REDACTED] does have additional historical records; however, they are not in a readily available and easily accessible format and will take some time to compile from as far back as 1998. [REDACTED], under by-law [REDACTED], imposes a fee for such special research/information requests at a rate of $173/staff hour that would be applicable to this information request. We estimate it will take a minimum of 3 hours to consolidate the requested documents identified in your email below for a total fee of $519. Our staffing model is very lean and as such, we anticipate a 3 week turnaround time following receipt of payment to provide the requested information.”

• An out of office e-mail, which request you contact a different person, whose email is only sometimes provided.