Heather Wright/The Independent

Plympton-Wyoming councillors say now is not the time to increase development charges.

Currently, the town charges developers $10,881 for each single-family home built in the municipality. The cash is to help pay for items needed because the municipality is growing, such as road improvements and new parks facilities.

The town hired BM Ross to review the projects which could be included in the development charges fees in the next five to 10 years. The new list included a new fire station in Camlachie and about $15.7 million in wastewater treatment projects.

If council would have agreed to fund all the projects suggested through development fees, development charges would jump 120 per cent to between $24,000 up to $37,000 in the Hillsboro area. The development charges study sets the upper limit of what a municipality could charge.

It was clear from the start council and staff were not in favour of increasing the fees, particularly because the province is offering cash to municipalities to cut development fees to spur home building. In Sarnia, for example, council recently agreed to cut development fees to $20,000 per home if the province provided a grant to cover the rest of the fee.

“A lot of those municipalities are reducing them because they want to spur on growth,” says Chief Administrative Officer Adam Sobanski. “They have the projects that have been identified as key priorities for the provincial governments, such as water and wastewater in them, to allow them to apply to that grant and more than offset what they lose in development charges.

“Unfortunately, this current development charge bylaw doesn’t have that.”

That worried Councillor Alex Boughen.“We’re going to be increasing by a lot, and potentially all of our neighbours in southwestern Ontario are going to be decreasing because the province is funding millions and millions and millions of dollars per
municipality for these projects,” said Boughen.

“The timing has that political lens on it where now we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place” by including projects water and wastewater projects in the fees.

“We’re going to be shooting ourselves in the foot because we’re so behind all the municipalities that are now going to drop them.”

Councillor Bob Woolvett also spoke against increasing the fees to developers.

“We want to continue to sell homes in this municipality, I don’t believe that increasing things 120 per cent is the way to do it,” says Woolvett.

“Everybody in this country is talking about affordable housing and here we are looking at increasing development charges by 120 per cent.”

Councillor Mike Vasey agreed. “There’s no way in the world that we can up this to $37,000 for building on Townsend Line like that, to me, is just ludicrous.

“Everybody else is dropping (development charges), so I could see (Plympton-Wyoming development) just becoming stagnant. We’ve got all this development land that’s everybody’s eager as a beaver to build on, and it’s just going to dry up,” Vasey said, suggesting it could cause a building lull for 20 years.

Four developers also spoke against the increase at a public meeting Monday.

Mike Radcliffe of Radcliffe Homes which recently built 130 homes in Wyoming said developers already pay up to $18,000 per home – the development fees and additional fees to hook into water and sewer. He says other municipalities combine the fees.

Radcliffe says his company alone paid about $2.3 million to the municipality while bringing in new residents and $450,000 in new taxes a year.

“You can you can ask for the moon, but if no one else is going to buy in here or no developer is going to do any more developments, then that doesn’t help you,” he says.

“Have you calculated how many people aren’t going to buy because prices are going to go up 15 grand per house?” Carl Kongas of Castleman Contracting asked the contractor. The answer was no.

Sobanski says it is clear a 120 per cent increase is not a good idea.

“We recognize that the ask is ridiculous. We do not expect the council to pass it, but we need to show you what the ceiling is,” he says.

“We have all those projects in there that can benefit from these grants, benefit from these contributions in the future bylaw so we’re not stuck behind an old bylaw that doesn’t reflect our current needs.”

Councillors were clear, this is not the time for a massive increase. Instead, they voted to extend the current development fees for another year with the new council revisiting the issue in the new year.