Proposed development-charge increases for Wellesley Township presented at public meeting

By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The fees used to recover the costs of infrastructure necessary to support growth and other costs associated with residential development could soon increase by more than 50 per cent.

As Wellesley council prepares to consider a new development-charges bylaw, consultants form Watson and Associates presented the results of a background study necessary to inform the new development charges, both for residential and non-residential development, during a statutory public meeting Nov. 12.

“The intent of development charges are to recover the capital costs associated with new development in a municipality,” said Sean-Michael Stephen, a managing partner with Watson and Associates. “Municipalities are able to impose these bylaws under the authority of the Development Charges Act. We’re typically looking at the broader, growth-related needs of the municipality from a capital standpoint in addition to the local development costs of an individual subdivision or plan of development.”

Revenue collected through development charges typically goes toward the costs of infrastructure that is normally built as part of a subdivision like internal roads, watermains, sidewalks and streetlights, as well as infrastructure projects that expand a municipality’s capacity for future growth like parks and recreation or fire-protection services.

The calculation for determining development charges takes into account projected residential and non-residential growth, the projected increase in need for service to accommodate that growth, the capital cost to provide that increased service and the recoverable cost of infrastructure to accommodate that growth.

In Wellesley, the consultant said the township is expected to grow by six per cent, from 11,388 to 12,105, over the next decade, which will require an additional 320 residential units of all housing types. On the non-residential side, the consultant said the number of people working in the township is expected to grow by 11 per cent, from 3,018 to 3,358 employees, requiring an increase of nearly 39,000 square metres of commercial or industrial floor space.

With approximately $19.4 million in anticipated capital costs over the next 10 years, Stephen said the township would likely be able to recovery nearly $6.3 million or 32 per cent of that cost.

The vast majority of that development-charge revenue, he said, would be funnelled into parks and recreation services (59 per cent or just over $3.7 million) to help pay off the recent construction of the Wellesley Recreation Complex. A little more than $1.4 million or 23 per cent of those recoverable costs would go to highways and related services, 12 per cent would go to fire-protection services, five per cent to library services and roughly one per cent to growth-related studies.

For new, single-detached, residential builds, that means the township’s development charge will, if the bylaw is approved by council later this month, increase by 53 per cent from the current rate of $13,551 to $20,779.

Meanwhile, the development charge for new, non-residential builds would actually decrease by 46 per cent, from $43.40 per square metre to $23.32 per square metre.

“We can see the majority of that (residential development-charge) increase is related to the increase in the charge for parks-and-recreation services, the reason being including the full amount of the growth-related share over the 10-year period for the recreation complex and associated long-term debt repayments for that facility,” Stephen said.

The consultant noted the proposed decrease to the non-residential development charge is because businesses don’t see the same benefit from parks-and-recreation services that residents do, which means builders of non-residential developments pay less to support those services. As the construction of the recreation complex was the main driver for the increase to the proposed residential development charges, that impact is not as big a factor for the proposed non-residential development charge.

While no members of the public spoke during the public meeting on Nov. 12, the consultants will incorporate any feedback from council and the public into the new development-charges bylaw before it is brought back to council for final consideration at its Nov. 26 meting.