Residents and developers alike will see some increase to the cost of living and doing business in Okotoks in 2018.
Okotoks municipal utility bills will be rising $9.45 bimonthly in the New Year. As well, development permit fees will nearly double for new residential construction in town, to $750 plus $100 per unit, from $400 plus $75 per unit.
Chris Radford, operations director for the Town, said utility rates are increasing to keep water, wastewater, sewer and waste services on a cost-recovery basis.
“We’re looking at the full cost recovery and looking at council’s wish to have al utilities self-sustaining,” said Radford. “There are some gaps and waste is one of them where we need to make sure we’re covering all of the cost to manage that program.”
The waste management fee will increase by just over $3 bimonthly to $44.15 every two months, which he said is about a seven per cent increase. The increase takes into account the cost to operate and maintain the program, which includes repairing or replacing trucks and other equipment as needed, he said.
For water and sewer, rates are based on average consumption of 19 cubic metres per month of water, he said. In addition to a 45-cent increase to the storm rate (to $12) and the waste fees, he said the overall utility bill increase will be 4.24 per cent.
He said water rates are increasing due to a four per cent hike in the labour contract from Epcor. The company provides oversight and operations for water and wastewater facilities in town.
“They have all the operating staff to maintain the water treatment plant operation, the wastewater treatment operation, the water distribution system and the sanitary wastewater collection system,” said Radford. “Their contracted services have gone up every year.”
In addition to higher utility rates, the Town is also implementing higher development permit fees in order to catch up after not updating its rates for as many as three years, according to development services director Michael MacIntyre.
“We do try to stay competitive in terms of the surrounding municipal neighbours – Cochrane, Calgary, Airdrie and so on,” said MacIntyre.
He said development permits differ from utilities and are not operated on a complete cost-recovery basis, though the Town does strive to recover some costs to the taxpayer for services it provides developers.
A jump from $400 to $750 for a permit looks steep, but MacIntyre said that’s what happens when fees aren’t updated annually.
In addition to raising the cost of permits, the Town is implementing a new fee this year to offset the time personnel spend with developers on concept plans, he said. The fee will be $1,000.
“It’s a less formal stage in the process, but it still takes a lot of times and staff resources to review proposals and discuss the alternatives for servicing transportation or what have you,” said MacIntyre.
The concept plan is derived from the outline plan of a development, which is a detailed version of a previously-approved area structure plan. It looks at a quarter-section of land in full detail, including engineering specs.
At this stage, developers are typically trying to gauge the market and determine whether they should proceed, he said. Most developers want to have confidence in their market potential before investing in engineering studies for transportation, water and sewer requirements, he said.
“Once they get to that stage they like to sit down with the Town – we like developers to do this as well – to kind of have a conversation about what their intentions are and what the Town’s expectations will be in terms of engineering and planning information,” said MacIntyre.
It costs the Town in terms of staff resources, and applying a fee to the process allows recovery of the costs spent in helping a developer get to the official application stage, he said.
