City of Powell River Council will reconsider its development cost charges (DCC) bylaw.
At the July 14 committee of the whole meeting, manager of engineering services Nagi Rizk said he was reviewing a revision to rescind the third reading of the bylaw, which council had previously made. He said the reason is for a revision the inspector of municipalities made to the bylaw regarding the third reading that had been submitted to the province.
Rizk said the inspector asked that a section in contravention of the Local Government Act be deleted. He said the committee was also being asked to give the proposed revised bylaw a new third reading so it could be taken back to the inspector and move toward adoption.
“Nothing major has changed, other than a subsection, which was a carryover from the previous bylaw,” said Rizk.
Rizk said after revising and making the calculations again for development cost charges, there would be changes to fees charged under the bylaw. For example, for a single-family home under the previously adopted third reading, fees would have been $10,159. Under the revised fees, a single-family residence would face development cost charge fees of $9,500, which includes sanitary sewer, water, drainage, roads and park improvement fees.
“All of the DCC fees from the previous third reading have come down,” said Rizk. “I call that good news because, as you can see in the proposed bylaw, we are not to deter development, we are not to discourage construction and we are not to discourage new development or redevelopment of commercial and industrial.
“In other words, the DCC bylaw is here to actually encourage development.”
Rizk said the inspector of municipalities has seen the proposed bylaw in front of the committee and approves of what they have seen.
“Having said that, they cannot approve it officially, unless council gives it a third reading,” said Rizk. “That is why we have brought this forward.”
The committee gave consent to refer the matter to city council for third reading.
