City council isn’t willing yet to give developers a free ride when it comes to the development of new infrastructure for water distribution.
During Monday night’s council meeting, Coun. Cathy Heron amended one of the guiding principles on which council was voting. The principles, 11 in total, were drafted between administration and the Urban Development Institute (UDI) to provide a jumping-off point for more detailed negotiations on a new bylaw for offsite levies.
One of the guiding principles stated, “There shall be no development charge for water infrastructure.” Heron amended the motion to state any development charge for water would be proportionate between developers and the city. The city’s current offsite levy bylaw makes developers responsible for 95 per cent of the cost of water infrastructure with the city picking up the remaining five per cent.
“What the key factor is, and it is mentioned several times, is that we have be competitive,” said Coun. Roger Lemieux. “So I would suspect you will be coming back to us and saying the majority of the charge goes to the city.”
“The way it’s written up is pretty much an all-or-none,” said Heron. “This is the meat of this issue and the big principle we’re discussing today.”
Council voted on and passed all of the remaining guiding principles individually, allowing administration to begin exploring further levels of detail that would have otherwise been difficult.
“We would not have been here now if we’d done the detailed analyses of all of these [principles],” said Guy Boston, general manager of planning and engineering. “The endorsement is to go through after you have given us your blessing on what the guiding principles are. This is not locking anything in.”
The remaining principles focus on everything from serving lands that might later be part of St. Albert but currently aren’t, wastewater and stormwater management, front-end infrastructure, calculating costs and future reimbursement. Unchanged is the offsite levy for Ray Gibbon Drive passed in 2009, in which developers pay 50 per cent of the cost of lanes one and two.
But it was the principle around water that consumed most of council’s attention and energy. According to an administrative report and representatives from UDI, municipalities such as Edmonton do not charge offsite levies for water while others do. St. Albert’s levy is seen as particularly restrictive within the development community. Charging developers nothing for expensive capital projects such as pumphouses or reservoirs would mean the city would have to start using debt to finance such projects, which goes against St. Albert’s 100-year utility model.
“The bottom line is the competitiveness of the community,” said Coun. Wes Brodhead. “Even though Edmonton was used as a comparator, monies contributed always muddy the water. In my contemplation of this topic, in order to be competitive, we have to compete.”
The principles also create the possibility of implementing a permanent area charge (PAC), which is permitted under the Municipal Government Act (MGA). According to Todd Wyman, a member of the city’s growth initiative team, PACs are charges calculated on a per-hectare basis by the developer, compared to offsite levies, in which a municipality calculates the charge. Essentially, developers that front-end infrastructure can charge future developers who hook up to it.
“A PAC is 100 per cent developer risk. For offsite levies, its all city risk,” Wyman said.
With the principles passed, both sides will continue to develop a bylaw for council’s consideration. Boston said that bylaw will hopefully be ready by the summer. In the interim, besides negotiating, principles will also be put out to landowners and developers for feedback.
