Proposed increases to the Regional District of Nanaimo’s development cost charges will see a rise of 39 per cent and likely take effect in the fall of 2022.
At the last regular meeting on Monday, March 21, Parksville city council received a brief report on the proposed increases by Sean De Pol, director, waste and watershed services for the RDN.
“DCCs are used to offset costs directly related to new development,” said De Pol. “So when a new development comes in, they require capacity of existing infrastructure. In our case, I’m talking just about the RDN wastewater infrastructure.”
He said each development type they’ve calculated will require a certain amount of capacity, and DCCs are established to ‘cover off’ the costs that increase capacity of wastewater facilities.
“In our case, that is our major interceptor line that runs from Parksville all the way up to Qualicum Beach and conveys wastewater to the French Creek pollution control centre,” said De Pol.
However, the RDN does allows for 100 per cent reduction for affordable housing, which De Pol said, followed after the city’s lead, and is in affect for approximately 10 years.
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The last review and update to DCCs were done in 2017, under the local government act.
According to a slide shown during De Pol’s presentation, there will be a 39 per cent increase across the board for single-family and multi-family dwellings, airport industrial, industrial, commercial and institutional developments.
For example, under the current DCC rate, an existing single-family dwelling at $10,067.10 per unit, will increase to $14,004.94 per unit.
“That’s a 39 per cent increase over a period of five years, which correlates very closely with what we’ve seen from an operational perspective with our tax requisition,” he said. “We’ve established what each development type requires from a capacity perspective to develop the DCC recoverable rate. And we followed the lead of both Parksville and the Town of Qualicum Beach to come up with what each one of these factors are.”
Before the increase is set, there will be public information sessions in May that will focus on developers as DCCs are applied to land development.
Depending on the turnaround for RDN’s submission to the province for the proposed increases, De Pol said the adoption will likely start in either September or October this year.
The proposed increases will apply to the City of Parksville, the Town of Qualicum Beach and a few select areas within Electoral Area G (French Creek, San Pareil, Little Qualicum, Englishman River) and E (Nanoose Bay).