By John Francis, Bruce Peninsula Press
At its regular Meeting on November 16, 2023, Bruce County Council voted to adopt Development Charges for the County.
The rationale for Development Charges runs like this: as people move into an area, infrastructure must be improved to accommodate those people. A county or municipality must either raise taxes on existing ratepayers or find a way to pass the charges on to the new arrivals. From the bylaw’s preamble, “…a municipality may by by-law impose development charges against land to pay for increased capital costs required because of increased needs for services…”
Bruce County chose to implement a Development Charge rather than raising taxes on existing ratepayers.
The Development Charge will apply to new residential and commercial construction, although there are many exemptions. The Development Charge for a new detached single-family dwelling will be $7,665. Multiple-unit dwellings will pay a lower rate; commercial construction will pay by the square foot.
Development Charges do not apply to lot severances or plans of subdivision; they do not kick in until a building permit is issued.
Many classes of construction are exempt from the Development Charge. Most significant among the exemptions are: affordable housing, rental housing and most construction and renovations to create Additional Dwelling Units. Churches, hospitals, barns and temporary buildings are also exempt.
The Development Charge will be phased in over an eight-year period, beginning next year. Building permits issued in 2024 will pay 25% of the specified fee; this increases to 40% in 2025, 55% in 2026 and increases by 10% per year thereafter until reaching 100% in 2031. The Development Charge is also indexed to inflation.
MNBP Mayor Opposed DCs
In a recent interview, Northern Bruce Peninsula’s Mayor Milt McIver told me he is not a fan of Bruce County implementing Development Charges at this time (and MNBP Council very much supported him on this). But MNBP has only one of the eight votes on Bruce County Council and six of the Mayors were in favour of DCs. Mayor McIver was able to insert a clause exempting new builds in MNBP that are under 1,000 square feet. (The concern here relates to the definition of “affordable housing”. If a value-based definition is used, even the most spartan new build in MNBP might not qualify as affordable; therefore a square-foot criterion was needed to prevent the Development Charge from making our affordability crisis worse. Most Bruce County municipalities have their own Development Charges and their own definitions of “affordable housing”; the County Bylaw simply incorporated those definitions. With no municipal bylaw and no provincial definition in place, MNBP needed a stopgap criterion for “affordability”.)
Mayor McIver has a number of concerns with regard to the County’s Development Charges:
• He is concerned that MNBP will not get its fair share of the infrastructure Bruce County builds with DC revenues.
• He would like to see the definitions tightened so that the “rental housing” exemption applies only to long-term rental housing. He feels that exempting Short-Term Accommodations would not be fair.
• He would like to see the definitions tightened so that the “affordable housing” exemption does not apply to Short-Term Accommodations.
When Edward Henley, Bruce County’s Director of Corporate Services, made a presentation to MNBP Council in support of implementing a County Development Charge, he provided a list of capital projects those charges would fund. Only one of the projects on that list extended into MNBP and that one would constitute barely 2% of the overall revenue, while MNBP was projected to provide 12% of that revenue.
MNBP sent a brief to Bruce County in response to Manager Henley’s presentation. The MNBP brief requested the aforementioned 1,000 square foot definition of “affordable housing” and also spoke to the distribution of DC revenues. MNBP stated that “…a more equitable approach to utilizing Development Charges for growth projects is essential. This includes long term, transparent allocation by establishing criteria for project selection and fund distribution.
“Implementing an equitable approach to County Development Charges helps ensure that resources are distributed fairly and that all areas of the county benefit from development projects.”
MNBP Council Nov 14 Mtg
Firefighting Drones?
Emergency Management Ontario is offering “Community Emergency Preparedness” grants, with an application deadline of Nov 30. Council approved MNBP Fire Chief Jack Burt’s proposal to apply for three “Remote Piloted Aircraft Systems” (drones) plus the appropriate “pilot” training.
An excerpt from Chief Burt’s Report to Council:
“Drones are becoming a valuable tool for firefighting operations and emergency management. The use of drones to quickly identify fires or locate people in hard-to-reach areas is becoming an increasingly imperative tool for first responders.
Further, the use of drones mitigates risk to first responders during technical rescues allowing for emergency scenes to be scouted in advance of deployment. The use of drones provides an additional level of safety before firefighters enter the water or on ice for rescue operations, and for scene size up prior to deploying, and during deployment, of equipment and staff for high angle rescues. Drones are also becoming a valuable tool for search and rescue of lost or injured persons in forested areas, saving time in locating individuals without taxing emergency response resources locating people on through ground search and rescue tactics.
Drones can also be an instrumental tool in locating fires in heavily forested areas that are hard to access, or are inaccessible, providing for a quicker response to an area to mitigate a fire before it becomes beyond the control of local resources. Northern Bruce Peninsula’s Climate Action Plan has identified an increased fire risk for the municipality due to climate change, increased tourism, and more development. The use of a drone will increase the fire department’s ability to locate fires before they become larger concerns.
A drone can also be used by other municipal departments for municipal marketing, property inspections, building inspections, surveying, road and bridge inspections, etcetera.”
New Federal STA Rules?
People who are watching the Short-Term Accommodation (STA) situation in MNBP think that a lot of STAs are “flying under the radar” — not registering, not paying fees and not adhering to regulations. But help may be on the way.
A report in the Toronto Star under the headline “Trudeau government to crack down on people who profit from short-term rentals like Airbnb: source” says that: “Property owners in areas that already restrict short-term rentals will no longer be able to claim their rental expenses against the income they make, a senior federal official told the Star, in a bid to take away the incentive to flout local restrictions and list properties on platforms like Airbnb anyway.”
The Toronto Star report explains that the rationale for the government’s move is to increase the housing stock by pushing landlords towards long-term rather than short-term rentals.
