Sarnia’s Reality: Why Growth Promises Keep Failing
Updated: Sep 27
Introduction:
Sarnia’s growth has stalled: We are the slowest‑growing city in the region, with only 0.6% population growth from 2016–2021, limiting assessment increases and tax‑base expansion.
Our infrastructure burden is oversized: With $4.6 billion in infrastructure and one of the highest per‑capita replacement values, Sarnia carries more municipal responsibility than comparable cities.
Underfunding has created a major deficit: We invest below the required 1.8% of replacement value annually, producing a backlog in the hundreds of millions and constraining every growth initiative.
Strategic borrowing is essential: Productive borrowing focused on industrial/commercial expansion and core infrastructure is the only realistic path to modernizing the city and attracting employers.
Growth requires a new direction: Sarnia cannot expand amenities, housing, or economic opportunities until it repairs and upgrades the foundation beneath them. Continuing old strategies guarantees the same results.
Sarnia’s municipal challenges are not mysterious. They are measurable. Population trends, tax rates, and infrastructure obligations all point to the same conclusion: our city is carrying a structural burden that outpaces our ability to fund it. The data makes this clear:
1) POPULATION GROWTH 2016 - 2012
Municipality 2016 Population 2021 Population Percent change 2016-2021
Sarnia 71,594 72,047 + 0.6%
Strathroy-Caradoc 20,867 23,871 + 14.4%
London 383,822 422,324 + 10%
Windsor 217,188 229,660 + 5.7%
Chatham-Kent 102,042 104,316 + 2.2%
2) Property Tax Rates
Municipality 2025 Mill Rate 2026 Mill Rate*
Sarnia 1.733719 1.797
Strathroy-Caradoc 1.257
London 1.676 1.7271
Windsor 2.095 2.097
Chatham-Kent 2.247958
*(Not all 2026 mill rates available at time of writing)
3) Infrastructure Value
Municipality Est. Total Infrastructure Replacement Value (TIRV) Est, TIRV per capita
Sarnia $ 4.6 Billion $ 63,800
Strathroy-Caradoc $ 800 Million $ 34,650
London $22 Billion $ 52,000
Windsor $11 Billion $ 47,900
*Chatham-Kent $13.4 Billion $131,300
* Chatham-Kent covers the entirety of Kent County with several municipalities, rural roads, bridges, etc.
To summarize all the figures above: Sarnia is by far the slowest‑growing city in the region. Our property tax rate is high (though not the highest) and, apart from Chatham‑Kent’s unusual situation, we have the most infrastructure per resident to maintain.
These figures matter because they shape everything that follows: our tax base, our mill rate, our ability to invest, and ultimately our capacity to grow.
How MPAC, Mill Rates, and Growth Intertwine
Municipalities do not control MPAC assessments. What they do control is the mill rate, the multiplier applied to those assessments to determine property taxes.
When a city grows slowly, attracts little new industry, carries an aging housing stock, and offers fewer amenities, MPAC assessments rise more slowly. That is exactly what has happened in Sarnia. Lower assessments force higher mill rates, and higher mill rates constrain growth further. It is a feedback loop.
For 2026, Sarnia’s mill rate increased again. Even after drawing roughly $8 million from reserves to soften the impact, only $65.5 million was allocated to capital projects. Yet maintaining our existing infrastructure requires annual spending of at least 1.8% of total replacement value, about $83 million today. Years of underfunding have produced a backlog in the hundreds of millions.
With limited revenue tools, property taxes, user fees, permits, and borrowing, Sarnia must strike a balance. Ignoring any of these levers guarantees stagnation.
The Infrastructure Bottleneck
Candidates routinely highlight and promise new amenities, new businesses, waterfront improvements, downtown revitalization, convention centres, and housing expansion.
These ideas are appealing, and Sarnia genuinely needs progress in all of these areas.
But none of them can occur without addressing the foundation (infrastructure) beneath them.
A city cannot grow when its pipes, roads, sewers, and shoreline protections are aging faster than they can be repaired. It cannot attract employers when its industrial infrastructure is strained. It cannot modernize when its capital budget is perpetually insufficient.
Until Sarnia City Council commits to repairing, modernizing, and expanding core infrastructure, most of the promises repeated every election cycle will remain unattainable.
The Growth Ponzi Scheme; Why It Applies to Sarnia
Urban planner Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, describes a pattern he calls the Growth Ponzi Scheme. It is a cycle where cities expand outward, enjoy short‑term financial gains, and then face long‑term liabilities they cannot afford.
After World War II, municipalities across North America built new subdivisions supported by grants, development charges, and easy borrowing. But every new neighbourhood required roads, water lines, sewers, sidewalks, and stormwater systems, all aging together. The initial revenue disappeared, but the maintenance obligations remained.
Meanwhile, older neighbourhoods were chronically underfunded, creating a backlog of deferred maintenance. Decades later, when suburban infrastructure needed replacement, cities found that low‑density tax bases could not cover the cost. The hamster wheel sped up: cities had to grow even faster to pay for the liabilities created by previous growth.
Sarnia is now experiencing this pressure.
Marohn’s critique is not about borrowing itself. It is about unproductive borrowing that fuels sprawl. His remedy is clear: stop outward expansion, avoid debt‑funded low‑density development, and reinvest in existing areas through incremental, financially productive growth.
Strategic Borrowing: The Productive Kind
My advocacy for strategic borrowing may seem at odds with Marohn’s warnings, but the distinction is important.
I am not proposing that Sarnia borrow to build new subdivisions. I am proposing targeted borrowing to:
eliminate our infrastructure backlog
modernize core systems; accelerating sewer separation
support industrial and commercial expansion
attract job‑creating enterprises
This is productive borrowing, the kind that strengthens a city’s fiscal position. Industrial and commercial growth generates significantly higher long‑term tax returns and reduces the burden on residential taxpayers.
New investors shy away from cities that are not infrastructure-ready for them. Sarnia’s experience clearly shows that.
Other cities demonstrate this clearly. London borrows not to fuel sprawl, but to build infrastructure that unlocks high‑value development: industrial parks, serviced employment lands, and strategic capital projects. Their borrowing is tied to productivity, not expansion, and their tax base grows faster than their liabilities.
Sarnia must adopt the same approach.
The Danger of Chasing Residential Growth Alone
New housing, especially affordable housing, is essential. But relying on residential construction alone perpetuates the Growth Ponzi Scheme. Homes add long‑term liabilities without generating the revenue needed to support them.
Put simply: building houses feels like progress, but without expanding the commercial tax base, it adds future costs while missing the higher‑return investments that make a city financially resilient.
A Case for Federal Partnership
The federal government has sometimes demonstrated its willingness to invest heavily when presented with a compelling case.
Sarnia has such a case:
Our petrochemical industry is of national significance.
That industry requires a disproportionately large municipal infrastructure network.
Environmental mandates increase the cost of maintaining that network.
Our long‑standing avoidance of major debt has created a severe infrastructure deficit.
Our negligible growth threatens the stability of an industry critical to the national economy.
Our infrastructure is a national interest issue, not merely a local one. This needs to be the pitch to our local MP and above. Engaging the Provincial Government is key as well.
Shoreline Protection, A Separate, Urgent Need
Only Chatham‑Kent faces more pressing shoreline challenges than Sarnia in Southwest Ontario. We should treat shoreline protection as a standalone capital category, calculate its ten‑year cost, and submit it to the federal government as a dedicated funding request, ideally seeking a 50% federal contribution.
This approach recognizes that our shoreline responsibilities far exceed those of cities like London or Windsor and ties directly into our broader infrastructure needs.
The Path Forward
Sarnia cannot grow by repeating the same strategies that produced our stagnation. We must:
confront our infrastructure deficit honestly
adopt strategic, productive borrowing
prioritize industrial and commercial expansion
seek federal partnership where national interests are at stake
treat shoreline protection as a dedicated capital priority
reinvest in existing neighbourhoods rather than expanding outward, with exceptions for needed and affordable housing
Growth will not come from promises and campaign dreams alone. It will come from rebuilding the foundation that makes growth possible.
Until we do that, the city will continue to struggle, not because of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of infrastructure capable of supporting them.
My pledge remains: If chosen in this election, I will advocate tirelessly for a new direction in financing and growth as I have proposed. The old ways are not working, and we must not accept a continuation of what is holding our city back. Remember the adage, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
That seems to be an apt campaign slogan in Sarnia.
Chris Oram
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