Georgina increases development charges by 60%

Yorkregion.com
July 3, 2016
By Heidi Riedner

Georgina bumped its development charges (DC) by more than 60 per cent after council approved the town’s new DC bylaw June 22.

That raises the town’s development charges for the construction of a new home from an average of $7,113 to $11,469.

Those numbers are the result of a development charges background study completed by Hemson Consulting, as well as consultation with various stakeholders and members of the development community, including the Georgina Developers Association.

The hike in development charges will raise about $27 million during the next 10-year period in anticipation that population growth over the 2016- 2025 planning period will demand a more than $60-million capital program to provide for a wide variety of infrastructure and facility expansions that will service existing and new residents, according to the staff report tabled June 22.

The upcoming long-term financial plan for the town will propose funding and financing options with respect to those growth-related costs that would be incurred during the 2016-2025 planning period, although not recoverable through development charges during that same period.

Development charges are payable to the town upon building permit issuance.

In addition, developers must pay development charges of roughly $40,000 to York Region and $4,000 to the school boards for each new construction on town services.

Town staff met with members of the development community, including the Georgina Developers Association, for the purpose of refining the background study and proposed development charge rates and to strive for co-ordinated and cohesive growth forecasts between the Town of Georgina and the development community.

According to the report, one of the issues raised focused on growth forecasts - specifically that only 56 per cent of the housing anticipated in 2011 has been built between 2011 and 2015.

Altus, the developer group’s consultant, proposed this slower-than-anticipated growth should result in a higher growth forecast in the 2016 DC study, suggesting it is only with much higher growth that the town could achieve the 2031 population and employment targets that have been established for Georgina under the 2010 York Region Official Plan.

The town’s consultant, however, proposed that adjusting the DC study forecasts to ensure that the official plan targets are achieved would not necessarily alter the calculated development charges.

Hemson supported increasing the rate of growth after the 2016-2025 planning period when regional servicing would be in place to facilitate faster growth. In this way, charges calculated on the basis of the 2016-2025 planning period would be unaffected by the change.

In addition, the denominator for the development charge calculation for hard services would remain almost the same, making the calculated rates effectively the same.

Over the last five years, there has been an average of 191 housing completions per year in Georgina, according to the town’s consultant.