Heather Wright/The Independent

Building permit fees are going up between six and 206 per cent in Dawn-Euphemia.

Administrator Donna Clermont told council Monday the township has been loosing money on building permit fees since 2018 and those loses could be more than $10,000 in 2023 if council doesn’t increase the fees now.

Building fees, Clermont says, are supposed to cover the cost of the inspections required to make sure the work is done according to provincial standards.
Lambton County handles that work for Dawn-Euphemia. But since 2018, the amount the township pays for the inspection service is more than the building fees it collects.

In 2022, for example, the county charged Dawn-Euphemia $32,766.15 for 442.5 hours of inspections and the mileage used to get to the site. The township only collected $22,981 in permit fees, leaving a shortfall of $9,785.15.

Clermont says if there is the same level of building in 2023, the shortfall could be $10,891.

So far, township taxpayers have footed the bill for nearly $20,000 since 2018 because building fees have not covered the cost of inspection.

The administrator compared building fees in all of Lambton and then in the three surround rural municipalities of Brooke-Alvinston, Enniskillen and Oil Springs and then added 10 per cent for inflation to come to a new fee structure.

“We do like to keep our fees low to encourage development at the same time…it should really pay for itself,” Clermont told council.

The biggest fee hike is for multiple housing units or apartments – that fee jumps over 200 per cent to $5,160.

In some cases, Dawn-Euphemia’s fees were only slightly cheaper than surrounding municipalities – the building permit fee for an attached garage will go up about six per cent to $700 for example.

New home building permits will go up about 66 per cent to $1,640. But that’s far less than the average fee of $2,200 around Lambton.

Permits to build agricultural buildings will also go up – pole barn permits will go from $625 to $870 and permits for livestock barns will go from $625 to $1,450 if council approves the rate hikes April 3.

Councillors seemed agreeable to raising the rates to make the building permits user pay.

“Building permit fees – we should not be making money off them,” says Mayor Al Broad. “We should be enticing them to develop here but we should be covering costs.”

The township will hold a public meeting on the fees April 3, before council votes on the bylaw to enact the increased fees.