Residents and businesses, including heavy users of Sundre’s wastewater treatment facility, will be paying a varying degree of increases on fees and rates for municipal services starting this month.
Council approved a new fee rates bylaw for 2019 during its Dec. 17 regular council meeting. The new rates came into effect on Jan. 1.
“We reviewed some of our fees in preparation for 2019,” said Chris Albert, director for corporate services, during a presentation to council at the meeting.
One of the fees that was “increased, quite substantially, was the lagoon charges,” Albert said.
Companies are now being charged $75 to dispose of sewage at the lagoon compared to last year’s rate of $50.
“This is just to make up for third party larger trucks that are coming in.”
Albert said the change would bring in about $100,000 or more based on current usage.
Coun. Rob Wolfe wanted to know what other municipalities charge for such a service.
“We are low,” said Jim Hall, Sundre’s operations manager, adding he compared rates with Didsbury and Red Deer.
“We’re a good option. Even if the price goes up a bit, it’s travel time for those regional” companies, said Hall.
Through discussions with the operations manager, Albert said efforts would be ongoing to determine how to develop a tiered system for the lagoon to ensure “that the larger users are paying a larger fee, rather than a flat fee for all users. So that is something that we will work on in 2019.”
Hall said the current flat rate is applied per load, regardless of whether it’s a trailer load of 20 cubic metres, as an example, or a tri-axle with 300 cubic metres.
Staff will figure out which weight categories will qualify for a certain tier, while also determining a tier for lighter haulers, of which there are fewer that drop off 30 cubic metres a month but still pay as much as the big loads, he said.
“We’ll just figure out through our contracts which trucks are operating and then do that appropriately,” he said.
Details of how loads would be monitored to ensure heavy users are charged properly are also to be worked out, said Hall.
Business licences
Albert informed council that the economic development department reviewed business licence rates and created some new fees to address temporary businesses.
Licences for resident commercial business went up $2 to $110 and non-resident commercial went up $19 to $180. Included among the new fees are charges for non-resident single contractors, hawkers, peddlers, street vendors and other short-term businesses, at a rate of $50 for five consecutive days or less, as well as $100 for three consecutive months or less.
Planning and development
Additionally, the planning and development department reworked its entire fee schedule “to make it a little bit easier to calculate. It’s a little more comparable to neigbhouring municipalities,” said Albert.
Coun. Richard Warnock pointed out he had noticed some increases under the planning and development department.
“Some of those fees were increased quite a bit. If we’re in line with other municipalities, that’s good, but I just don’t want to hamper any potential (economic) momentum,” said Warnock.
Betty Ann Fountain, Sundre’s development officer, said she researched the rates imposed not only by other municipalities in the region but some that are also “farther afield” and proceeded to eliminate the highest and the lowest.
As a note, she mentioned that “Innisfail has the lowest development fees in the province; I’m not sure how they’re recovering their costs.”
Meanwhile, Airdrie and Strathmore have “very high” fees, she said.
“But based on the amount of development going on in those places, we really can’t compare ourselves to them.”
In Sundre, under the former fee structure for planning and development, a single detached home with a construction value of $350,000 would have a development fee of almost $590, she said.
“We’re proposing a flat fee of $225.”
While that is a reduction over the $590, building permits are typically based on the construction value, material and labour cost, she said.
“It’s been my experience that you do not use a construction value on a development of a single detached dwelling. Most municipalities that I’m aware of, other than Olds and Didsbury, use flat fees, because it is permitted use. It comes in, we review the site plan — it’s an obligation under the MGA (Municipal Government Act) to approve it as long as all of the requirements of the land use bylaw are met.”
This approach should help provide additional incentive for developers to come in and build homes on vacant lots, she added.
Chief administrative officer Linda Nelson said on another note that legal land transaction fees are no longer included under planning and development.
“We do all of that in-house. So that charge has been removed,” said Nelson.
Additionally, Mike Marko, director of planning and economic development, said administration discovered some areas where the municipality did not have specified fees on applications “that as community grows, we’ll be required to charge fees for…We’re trying to keep current with the fee structure to recognize processes that are either existing or emerging.”
Utilities, recreation
In terms of utilities, administration recommended slightly increasing flat rate fees on water and wastewater, but left the consumption portion of those fees unchanged, said Albert.
“We thought that was a nice balance to keep everything in line.”
Utility rates for water as well as wastewater are up to $21.50 from $20.50, while water consumption per cubic metre remains unchanged at $2.25 and wastewater consumption per cubic metre stays the same at $1.35.
Also, recreational facility fees will be revisited but for now remain the same as last year, giving the new community services manager a window of opportunity to better understand how those rates are set and what kinds of impacts would be involved with any increases, he said.
