A public meeting was held in Council on Tuesday night, to review proposed changes to the Town of BWG’s Building by-law, increasing the building permit fees for some classes of permits.
Director of Development and Engineering Peter Loukes, and Chief Building Official William Wong presented the Building Permit Review to council, outlining the proposed fees.
The current fees have not been reviewed or changed since 2005, Council was told. If approved, the new fees would come into effect Jan. 1, 2020. The proposed plan would include a three-year review period.
Loukes noted that with the recent slow-down in the housing market, “our reserves have dramatically dropped.”
He said the fee increase would be self supporting and that the BWG Building Department would not be generating any profit, but covering its costs.
When developing the new fees, the Building Department took into account all direct and indirect costs and categorized them based on type of building, including residential, ICI and farm buildings, the meeting was told.
The area with the greatest impact would be major residential, increasing 30 percent, from $11.10 to $14.40 sq/m.
Even with the 30 percent hike, BWG's fees would still be lower than the average fees of both Simcoe County and York Region, which stand at $15.62 and $14.83, respectively.
For businesses and personal services, the fee would almost double, jumping from $5.60 to $11.00 sq/m.
There would also be new fees introduced for conditional and partial permits, ideally for larger projects requiring more time with approvals and inspections.
“They are designed for larger buildings for changes to be made later,” explained Loukes.
Coun. Raj Sandhu liked the idea of a fee increase.
”When you look at the percent increase, it seems like a lot, but then you look at it we haven't touched it since 2005, it is way overdue,” he said. “I like what I see, thank you.”
Coun. Peter Ferragine agreed that the fee increase was overdue, and questioned why it has taken 15 years to review.
“We missed all the building that happened from 2010-2017 basically, which could have actually made the building reserves a lot better than we are dealing with today. Why did it take so long?” he asked.
Wong replied that he could not answer, but noted when he started the position three years ago, the reserve fund stood at $4 million.
There were no comments from the public. Council received the information, and will make a decision on the matter at a later date.
