One city councillor is proposing the municipal government start taxing vacant land as an incentive for owners to either develop it or sell it to someone who will.

Coun. Tom McLennan made the proposal during a governance and priorities committee meeting on April 28 at city hall. He suggested the city come up with a new by-law and property tax class for vacant lots, or increase the fees for holding those lots for the city's next budget. 

The tax could be applied either city-wide or in targeted areas, depending on council's direction and what city administration recommends.

"Land availability is one of, if not the biggest, roadblock to creating more housing in Yellowknife," said McLennan, who added the city has already designated all remaining significant areas of land for residential development.

Coun. Rob Warburton was generally supportive of McLennan's idea, but noted some points that need raising for future conversations.

"Ideally, it would be downtown-specific," Warburton said about the tax. 

He said that's because housing in that area would be denser than in more rural parts of the city, adding he does not want to disincentivize housing in those more rural areas. 

Warburton also mentioned there's plenty of lots for sale right now, but not a lot of buyers. 

So adding a tax that would theoretically incentivize either developing or selling might not be super effective, he said.

Warburton explained if a property owner keeps getting taxed and wants to sell their land, but there's no one to sell it to, then they'd likely have to sell that property at a price cheaper than its market value.

"I would really want to flesh out the full impact of if we have a number of large sub-market sales," he said. "I want to make sure we're really thinking about that. We're not going to sell some land to get built, but then we're going to decimate our tax base in an area of town and then lose a lot of assessed value."

Coun. Garrett Cochrane said he'd be in support of the tax as well, but wants to make sure all the appropriate details are hammered out and there's no issues around what the city's liable for. 

Couns. Ryan Fequet and Cat McGurk both said they'd support the motion in general as well and look forward to talking about it further.

Coun. Stacie Arden-Smith said she thinks the idea is important but wants to see it tabled to show what work the city already has on its plate for the rest of this council's term. 

Acting mayor Ben Hendriksen said he'd support talking more about McLennan's idea too. 

The next governance and priorities committee meeting is set for May 5.