A plan to streamline the way levies are assessed on new development has been given the green light by Weyburn City Council.
The new structure, based on a study prepared by Stantec Consulting, will provide private developers with a greater degree of certainty that appropriate services will be accessible to them as their projects proceed while assuring the City can sustain an expanding infrastructure without over-burdening tax payers. Council approved the new development regime this week.
"This amounts to a modernization of our policy, to more accurately reflect Weyburn's position as a growth city," explained Mayor Debra Button. "The old regime worked well enough in an era when new development was modest. But given Weyburn's proximity to the oil patch and significantly increasing demand for new land to accommodate residential and commercial expansion, we needed to bring our policy up to date to reflect this new reality."
The new policy is designed to address two key challenges - to encourage private developers to identify their future demands on city works and to plan how the city will finance and stage the development of those works necessary to facilitate ongoing growth and economic development.
The new policy also more accurately reflects the impact of various types of development - residential, commercial or industrial. This policy is designed to allocate an equitable share of costs between taxpayers and developers to ensure that growth is beneficial to all community stakeholders in both the short and long term.
"Finding the middle ground - where developers looking to invest in our community are treated fairly and taxpayers carry only their rightful share of expansion costs - is always a difficult challenge," said Mayor Button. "But after extensive study by outside experts and an in-depth review by our administration, we believe this new policy is a huge step in that direction."
The new plan, called the Development Cost Charge (DCC), is commonly used by local governments and is based on the principle that new growth should pay for itself, not be a burden on existing taxpayers.
The new DCC established fees/levies in Weyburn will be $86,000 per acre. This compares favorably with Regina's rate of roughly $98,000 and a proposed rate of $92,000 in Estevan.
