Whitby Shores Community Forums

In case anyone here is interested:

The Town of Whitby is having a public meeting regarding the Town's proposed development charges by-law.

Development charges are the fees levied on new land development projects; they're meant to address the cost to the Town for new or expanded infrastructure (e.g. roads, fire halls, libraries) needed to accommodate new development.  They're based on the projected cost of infrastructure as the town expands, and the proportion of benefit that goes to new vs. existing development.

The meeting will be happening on Monday, May 26 at 7:15 p.m. at the Town Hall on Rossland.  The notice for the meeting can be found here.

The development charges background study is on the Town web site here (warning - 10 MB file).  Of particular interest to Whitby Shores residents may be the reference to an Annes Street bridge, slated for construction in 2017 (page B-31 & B-33).

According to the notice, any comments can either be given in writing by May 21 (tomorrow) or in person at the meeting.

I encourage you to at least read the Executive Summary section of the report.  This stuff can be a bit dry, but it has a very real effect on our Town and what will happen with it for the foreseeable future.

Hey, all.

I went to the meeting last night.  Here are some notes:

- at this meeting, the Operations Committee received the development charges report and proposed by-law from the Town's consultant.  The next step in the process is the June 16 council meeting, where the full council will vote on the proposed by-law.  If passed, the new by-law and new development charge (DC) rates would come into effect August 1.

- the DC rates went up, but fairly close to the indexed price from last time and on par with other municipalities in the GTA.

- currently, the Town charges industrial developments 50% of the normal DC rate for non-residential as part of an effort to encourage new industrial development (and with it, industrial jobs and property taxes).  As it's written now, the proposed by-law eliminates this industrial discount and charges them the full rate.  Some councillors expressed concern about this, since they want to encourage industrial employers to come to Whitby. The Director of Marketing for the Town gave his opinion that while lower development costs are a factor in encouraging businesses to come to Whitby, most businesses put more emphasis on ongoing costs like taxes, power and water.

- currently, expansions of existing developments in the Whitby and Brooklin downtown areas are exempt from paying DCs.  The proposed by-law removes this exemption.  Some councillors (and the two downtown business associations) expressed concern about this for a few reasons:
   - they want to encourage intensification in the downtown cores.
   - these areas are already serviced, so the cost of growth (i.e. what DCs are supposed to address) is much less for these projects.

- the consultant and the Town have pretty well maximized the DC rate within the rules specified by the Provincial legislation.  They expect to recover approximately 64% of the cost of growth (much of which will provide benefit to existing development as well) through DCs.  This rate is better than in the past.

- the Region is in the midst of preparing a Growth Plan that will change a number of the base assumptions that were used to create the projections that were used to calculate the DC rates.  This means that this whole DC process will likely have to be re-done within 1-2 years.  Unfortunately, because the current DC by-law expires in July, the Town couldn't wait until then.

There were other discussions about some of the more nitty-gritty details.  If you want to know about them, give me a shout.