Development Fee Exemption or Reduction Request

Development fees are assessed to developers to help the Town maintain, repair, and replace infrastructure. These fees are assessed by almost all urban municipalities across Canada. Currently, it is estimated that the municipalities across Canada have a collective deficit of $123 billion. Our share in Kindersley is approximately $40 million with total assets of approximately $90 million.

Repairs and replacement on 5th Ave West.

During the SUMA conference in February engineers with Associated Engineers told us that the current level of fees are not enough to adequately address the infrastructure deficit. They told us of one municipality, I believe it was Regina, in which fees were significantly too low resulting in some challenges. After their study the fees in Regina went up to almost $80,000. We are looking at revisiting fees in the near to mid future.

A request came to Council from a numbered company requesting an exemption or a reduction in fees. It is very difficult to say yes to the request given our infrastructure deficit and the fact that in this current budget 76% of capital spending is for infrastructure maintenance, repair and replacement. I empathize with Mr. Bacon because when he purchased the property it was administered by the RM of Kindersley; the RM does not administer development fees to the best of my knowledge.

There are many tools available for economic development. Generally, such tools are used to address specific concerns such as a slow down, revitalizing an area like downtown, 'backfilling' empty lots so there are no empty lots in an area, targeting a specific industry and more. Council has been discussing the use of tax incentives as part of our strategic plan but no decision has been made yet.

I have written more on this topic elsewhere in this blog and if you search 'economic development' you should find the relevant posts.