CENTRE WELLINGTON – Council here will have to consider significant increases in development fees in order to achieve 100 per cent cost recovery.
Development fees haven’t been updated since 2004, said Peter Simcisko of Watson and Associates, retained by the township in 2020 to conduct the review.
Development fees are different from development charges.
Those are charges to developers at the time a building permit is issued to help pay for the cost of infrastructure related to growth – roads, sanitary sewers, fire and police, for example.
Development fees are administrative costs associated with processing applications.
Simcisko told council on Jan. 30 meeting that in 2004, the township had a 75% cost recovery rate, and with the increase in the volume of applications and time demanded of staff since then, the proportion has become smaller – somewhere around 37% cost recovery.
The department currently has 3.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees to process planning applications, but the work requires consultation with other departments and its share of IT, human resources, and capital costs in terms of requiring space in township hall for meetings and to house staff.
Simcisko said given the anticipated increase in volume as the province has issued orders to build more homes, the township will need another 2.8 FTEs to manage the workload and eventually might also need a manager of planning.
He anticipated the cost of providing the service is about $1.16 million but it is only generating $433,000 from fees.
“So that’s a gap we hope to narrow and close entirely,” he said.
As well as increasing fees, Simcisko recommends the following changes:
- a new fee for joint official plan and zoning bylaw amendments. This would be lower than two separate fees as there are efficiencies in dealing with these applications at the same time;
- changing from a base and per-unit fee to a flat fee structure for draft plans of subdivision and set agreement as separate fee;
- a different fee structure for different kinds of draft plans of condominium;
- a new lot grading and drainage plan approval and inspection fee where there is no master drainage or master lot grading plans;
- fees for pre-consultation meetings;
- new fees to recover the cost of engineering services, including administration and inspections associated with site plans and subdivisions;
- new fees to recover the cost of parks development.
This will lead to 99% cost recovery, Simcisko said.
With this background information, council directed staff to bring a report to council with the proposed amounts, fee structure and accompanying bylaw at a future date.
