Puslinch building permit revenues increased by 237 per cent in 2013

“It’s been quite a year for building and associated permit fees,” says Puslinch Mayor Dennis Lever.

While building permits are up 150% over 2011, the value of those permits increased 237%.

That translated to $646,221 in permit fees compared to the $191,869 collected in 2011.

Much of that was due to the big increase in construction value of local building projects.

The value of the buildings in 2012 topped $63,144,400 - compared to the previous year’s $18,412,100.

But August 2012 marked perhaps the best month for Puslinch, when a mere 26 building permits resulted in construction valued at $29,028,500 [a 2,780% increase over August 2011], bringing in permit fees of $259,024.

Numbers for that one month alone exceeded both the construction value and permit fees collected in 2011.

CBO Robert Kelly said, “definitely the fees we’ve seen are a little bit better than in recent years.”

However Kelly was quick to point out that was due to a large amount of commercial building this year.

He believed those numbers will drop to more traditional permit numbers.

Councillor Susan Fielding said that, as an interesting aside, her father-in-law was the part-time building inspector for Puslinch in the late 1960s, “and his pay was the building permit fees.”

She said, “you’d be a very wealthy man.”

Fielding humorously asked if Kelly might like to revert to that system.

Clerk Brenda Law noted that in that era, permit fees were probably only $10.