As a result of Ontario Government Bill 23, Waterloo Region’s three largest cities will be left with a budget shortfall of millions of dollars over five to 10 years, according to data provided by municipal officials.
Ford Govt. bill 23: The Build More Homes Faster Act was introduced on 25 October. Among other things, it would reduce fees that municipalities can charge developers for the cost of building city infrastructure to support a new community.
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Garrett Stevenson, interim director of planning at the City of Kitchener, says staff have ballparked the cost of Bill 23 to sit at about $40 million over 10 years.
“This includes hard infrastructure – things like sewers and pipes, development studies and land acquisition to provide soft services like a fire station at the community centre,” he said.
In Waterloo, city officials project developer fees to be around $23 to $31 million over the next five years, a reduction of about 35 percent.
“These are conservative figures as they do not include operational impacts nor do they include any cost assumptions related to the cost of creating more affordable housing,” a Waterloo spokesperson told Global News in an email.
A Cambridge spokesman said that if Bill 23 had been around for the past five years, it would have cost the city about $18 million in revenue.
A Waterloo spokesman also said it presented an issue as to how the funding shortfall could be met.
“Municipalities have limited funding tools. Unless funded by the province, Bill 23 would shift some development costs to the local tax base,” he wrote. “We could see significant increases in municipal taxes and utility rates to address the funding shortfall created by Bill 23, which would have a negative impact on affordability for existing homeowners.”
Stevenson said Kitchener is still trying to look at the options that would need to be used to make up for the lost revenue, but he also pointed out that there are many other issues that would be created by the bill.
“Bill 23 makes changes beyond the development fee,” he said. “I know that’s what’s resonating, but other aspects of the natural heritage system, the cultural heritage designation process in Kitchener, and other aspects have also changed.”
In the past, Kitchener would review a number of properties on the potential heritage list if redevelopment was proposed, but now it has to be done almost immediately.
“So we have a heritage inventory, which is assets that we believe may have additional heritage value that we have not fully reviewed,” explained the planner.
“The change proposed and approved through Bill 23 is that we will have to review every single property listing within the next two years to determine whether or not we are going to nominate.”
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