Off-site Levies Explained
There is a lot of confusion around off-site levies and rightly so. Stakeholders, including the Chamber of Commerce, met from April 2012 to June 2013 to review the scope, plans, infrastructure projects, allocations and costs and have gone through continual research and advocacy on the issue since that time. I can appreciate that without extensive involvement in consultations and research, it is a very difficult issue to fully comprehend, however I will attempt to explain it in brief.
An off-site levy helps pay for roads and municipal utility systems, such as water, storm sewer and sanitary sewage required outside or “off” the site of a particular development or subdivision that will directly or indirectly serve that development. Developers pay for the full cost of infrastructure within their development site, including roads and utility infrastructure, but are assisting the City by contributing to the costs of growth by paying a “levy” towards capital costs related to things like storage, transmission or treatment of supplying water; new or expanded facilities for the treatment, movement or disposal of sanitary sewage; new or expanded storm sewer drainage and new or expanded roads required for growth.
Though provincial legislation allows for this additional levy to be collected, every municipality needs to consider whether this provision will be adopted and implemented, and to what extent it will collect these fees through bylaw. This potential additional development cost must be assessed as to whether there will truly be a significant and enduring benefit to a specific development area or whether the project is for the benefit of the entire community.
Many smaller, rural communities have difficulty paying for public facilities and roads due to a smaller tax base and may need additional support for capital projects, while larger metropolitan centres tend to build facilities for specific communities within the City that can be attributed to a specific development area that would have no attributable or enduring benefit to the rest of the City. However in mid-sized cities such as Medicine Hat, public facilities, major connector routes or water treatment supply are generally seen as a taxpayer supported cost and are viewed to be a benefit to the community as a whole. When levied on business, additional costs such as these could be viewed as an added regulatory and cost burden that is being imposed, offloading municipal costs onto the backs of new business investment, development and even business expansions.