Growth In Peel
Paying For Infrastructure

NRU
Nov. 1, 2017
Dominik Matusik

Peel staff has released a draft update of the region’s growth management strategy, its first since the adoption of the revised provincial Growth Plan. The purpose of the new strategy is to prevent Peel from accruing additional growth-related debt stemming from inefficiencies in its infrastructure planning and in the timing of development charge collection.

Peel regional chair Frank Dale said, in an email to NRU, that a major component of the update is the analysis of ways to reduce infrastructure costs.

“Various growth distribution scenarios were analyzed to discover which distributions had lower overall infrastructure costs,” he says. “This intelligence was used to help inform the final growth allocation being considered by council through the growth management strategy. Going forward, the design standards for water and wastewater infrastructure are being reviewed to reflect current trends resulting in reductions in the per capita requirements for water and wastewater given the impact of conservation initiatives and increased intensification. In addition to this examination of the design standards, an emphasis will also be placed on reviewing the timing of infrastructure construction. This will all contribute to lower infrastructure financing requirements over the 2041 planning horizon.”

Peel growth management committee vice-chair and Caledon mayor Alan Thompson told NRU that one thing that needs to come out of this update—and something already practiced by other municipalities—is making developers pay some infrastructure costs upfront.

“I think on some of the projects, we’re asking [developers]—instead of being paid [on the issuance of a] building permit—to start paying some of the costs at site plan and plan of subdivision [stages],” he says. “...We’re always planning by numbers, but we’ve never put the hard financial numbers with it. And I think we finally have.”

“We’re going to be growing another 500,000 people. We’re going to two-million people in Peel. And to take all this growth, there’s huge costs. We’ve always believed growth pays for growth, but that just hasn’t been happening for the last little while,” Thompson says.

Peel policy development manager Adrian Smith told NRU that part of the reason for the update is to prevent the region from accruing more debt, which to date has resulted from the gap between development charges revenue and the upfront cost of infrastructure.

“The region had identified a new approach for managing growth,” he says. “...The new approach, in a nutshell, involves more upfront integration of the planning work, the infrastructure work, and the financial work together. As well as identifying opportunities to have more upfront collaboration across those disciplines with our local municipal colleagues.”

Smith says that region staff has also been monitoring changes to provincial policy.

“We’ve also been watching the provincial policy framework as it’s been unfolding,” he says. “... And with the release of the new Growth Plan in the late spring, we’ve incorporated that into the work and are now bringing forward a coordinated package of material to council... Certainly there’s pressure from growth, and Peel has been growing and is continuing to grow. And the growth allocation to Peel...that’s something we have to plan for and we’re looking at the total cost of that out to 2041 at about $9-billion. And one of the things that we did through this [update] process, is we looked at different scenarios and different distributions of that growth, different elements of intensification, and emphasis on greenfields. We looked at some of those differences and used that to refine what we’re bringing forward [to council].”

Thompson says that with the new strategy Peel has set a “gold standard.” He is eagerly awaiting the province’s comments.

“I think as far as the taxpayers in Peel, we’ve come up with a really good balanced plan. There’s always room for improvement, but I think we’ve got a pretty good start on answering what Places to Grow is looking for. And I’m really looking forward to seeing— the comments come back in 90 days–what the province thinks of our draft [growth management strategy].”

Region staff anticipates scheduling a public meeting in February and bringing a final version for council’s consideration in the spring.