Huntsville’s development charges are set to increase March 22, 2017. That means if you are contemplating building a single detached home, your local development charge will go from $2,570 to $3,052 and those charges are expected to increase steadily in the coming years. Still, Huntsville’s development charges remain slightly below those charged by Bracebridge and slightly above those of Gravenhurst.
“It’s kind of been Huntsville’s policy to be a little bit lower than Bracebridge and Gravenhurst if we can,” according to Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison. “It’s kind of a symbolic gesture to say we want to be more competitive in this area than those other two communities, because we’re competing to some degree against them.”
But development charges are just one tool municipalities will use to guide growth and development. According to Aitchison, there are a host of other tools municipalities use to try and attract more economic development. “There’s our tax rate, there’s the services that we offer even right down to little things like the ability to get things done at Town Hall. I mean is it an easier place to deal with? Are they more helpful in there? All of those things add up to whether people want to develop here [along with] the competitive climate, the vibrancy of our community.”
Aitchison said Huntsville is a vibrant community and its councils have made some good decisions through the years. “The theatre was one of the best ones. Keeping our Town Hall downtown and adding that theatre on there. In the summer months, particularly on the main street of Huntsville at 10 p.m., there’s people there, whereas in Bracebridge and Gravenhurst that’s not the case. So it all adds up. What community groups do and how engaged this community is, it all adds up to I think a pretty positive experience and a draw for people to purchase here and invest here.”
In the last few years, the Town has pulled in roughly $140,000 in development charges per year, but in 2016 it saw a major spike.
Our average collection of DCs is approximately $140,000. In 2016 we collected around $460,000. This is mainly due to an increase in larger developments such as Deerhurst (new condos), multiple new industrial and commercial buildings. Julia McKenzie, Manager of Finance/Treasurer
Municipalities can only use development charges for growth-related projects. “In general, they’re another tool the province has given municipalities so that new development pays for growth-related infrastructure. So if you need to expand a road because there’s that many more people living there, it shouldn’t be the people that live there for 30 years that have to pay for all of that,” added Aitchison.
But finding a strictly growth-related roads projects isn’t always easy. The Town has now turned its sights to using development charge funds to service the debt associated with the growth-related expansion of the Canada Summit Centre.
“We’re not going to have to four-lane any of our streets any time soon but we’ve got a huge expense into the Summit Centre,” said Aitchison, adding that it will offset some of the borrowing costs associated with the expansion of the Summit Centre.
It’s another way that it’s not coming out of the taxpayer’s pocket. It’s coming out of the developer’s pocket. Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison about development charges
The District of Muskoka also levies development charges. For a single detached home, its charges currently sit at $3,427 in rural areas, or $9,444 if you are building in an urban or serviced area of Muskoka. Still, the charges are significantly lower than the charges it could have charged as per its development charge background study.
“The discussion around the table was that they felt that they could incentivize development,” explained District Commissioner of Corporate Services Julie Stevens of District Council’s decision to charge about half of what they could as per their latest development charge study. Municipalities are required to conduct a development charge background study every five years and councils can decide whether to levy the full or partial amount based on that study.
In 2010, the Township of Lake of Bays charged $5,289 for a single detached residential home. In 2015, its rate went down to $2,127, making it among the lowest of lower-tier municipalities in Muskoka.
“Our concern was they were getting way too high when you added ours together with the District’s,” explained Lake of Bays Mayor Bob Young. “It makes it so punitive when you’re building a house.”
He said his council has tried to encourage sustainable and well planned development. “Certain kinds are prevented because we don’t have sewer and water but with our OP (Official Plan) changes we were trying to make it a little easier for people to buy land and make it less costly although we didn’t succeed very much because we had some strong lobbying from people like Lake of Bays Association, who really don’t want to see any development, anywhere, of any kind – it’s the land of NIMBY and we were trying to fight that. And the other thing I felt when I came in, was Lake of Bays was the Township of no… we had this horrendous negativity about us, which I think over the past six years we’ve broken down and said ‘no, you come and talk to us and as long as you’re willing to work within our rules and within our concepts, we’d be happy to support your development,” said Young, referring mostly to residential development as there’s very little commercial development in the township.
Likewise, he said the municipality did not want to make its development charge punitive. “They’re a revenue source. You don’t have to use them but you have to review them every five years.”
He said he’s felt a lot of resistance from those who would rather not see any further development in the township. “I mean LOBA is fighting us on OP changes that would make it easier and a little cheaper for people to buy land, for example, on back lots. They fought us on making rural lots smaller so that people could actually afford to buy a piece of land and build their own little house. They fought us so hard that council agreed not to proceed with that change to the OP. So, I feel like I’m under the gun if you will from the Nimbyism and protectionism all the time,” he lamented.
You can find Huntsville’s full development charges effective March 22, 2017 here (PDF) and the District development charges here (PDF).
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Great isn’t it. They say they want us to “preserve the natural beauty and ecosystems of the area”. This is good because when you get to the final analysis the only thing Muskoka has to “sell” is the environment. Healthy forests and clean water.
One cannot stress the clean water enough as in my travels it is hard not to note that there are very few areas of the world where one would feel happy about swimming in “their water”. In the case of Muskoka, if the water is not only good for swiming but also as a source of potable drinking water then we are effectively “out of business” as a tourist destination so it behooves us to look after our water for sure.
So as a land owner you try to preserve these natural features so that future generations might have the same water quality we have had. What does government do to “help” you? Well they tax you to the point that if it is water front you pretty much have to develop it and either sell it or rent it to pay the tax bill. Seems a bit counter productive to the end goal.
I’d like to thank the Lake of Bays association for paying so much for the conservation land in the lower Oxtongue river that it forced MPAC to reassess my little piece of that area and they increased my assessment by a factor of 475%. This is progress!! I still can’t do anything with this land but look at it because no structures, no docks, no roads are allowed in this area but wow it is now valuable to somebody.
By the way this increase is AFTER I asked for and got a considerable reduction with a request for reconsideration. The initial increase was….. drum roll here…. 2725 % (yes that is in the thousands!)
And (sorry to my teachers for starting with “and”) to add insult to this whole process they increase this assessment this much with just a notice that contains nothing, absolutely nothing! in the way of explanation of why they did it.
This process is counter productive to maintaining our natural environment. So much so that if Atomic Energy Canada came along and offered me big $$ to bury nuclear waste on my site I think I’d accept! At least I’d get some money out of the property, something our governments seem not to consider as they ask us all to pay and pay again, first with taxes and then development fees, and then permit fees and then user fees…. I could go on but if you live here you already know what I’m talking about and I don’t need to depress you further.