Wellington North reconsiders controversial development charges
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
© AgMedia Inc.
By BETTER FARMING STAFF
A Wellington County municipality that imposed a development charge on new agricultural buildings will decide on Monday whether to rescind its policy.
“This has been such a touchy subject,” says Mike Broomhead, mayor of the Township of Wellington North. Broomhead issued a news release this week to announce the municipal council’s intent to exempt agricultural buildings by amending a related bylaw.
He says he issued the news release before the meeting to avoid being misquoted. “We have already had one farmer come in who’s building a new home . . . he’s upset with our building department because he thought all development charges are being waived.”
The issue came to a head last fall when local dairy farmers Colvin and Elizabeth McAlister learned they would have to pay $11,500 in development fees to complete a Canada-Ontario Environmental Farm Plan-financed project.
More than 50 local farmers aired their concerns at a November council meeting and the township subsequently commissioned a Mississauga-based economic firm, Watson and Associates Ltd., to review the charges. The township also hosted a public meeting on the issue in April.
“We were afraid if we had accepted it (the development charge), it could have possibly swept across the province,” says David Parker, president of the Wellington Federation of Agriculture.
Broomhead acknowledges other municipalities have closely scrutinized the issue.
“It’s getting tougher and tougher” for Ontario’s small town municipalities to pay its bills, he says. “All we were doing was trying to put together a plan we thought was fair and equitable for everybody and obviously those choices weren’t well-received so we adjusted.”
If the exemption is passed, council will have to look at other ways to raise revenue and that may mean a tax hike, Broomhead says. He notes that when the charge was first proposed two years ago, it was expected to generate $150,000-$300,000 annually for the municipality. That amount would now likely be considerably less with the recession, he adds.
The exemption applies only to agricultural buildings. The fees would still apply to properties with commercial, industrial, institutional and residential zones. A fee of $2.07 a square foot in rural areas for commercially zoned properties would apply to on-farm stores and greenhouses, if they sell to the public.
Council will also consider applying the fee to commercial wind turbines on Monday.
Parker calls the exemption a win for both the agricultural community and the municipality. It will help to encourage on-farm improvements and make it easier for new farmers to enter the business. Improved farms mean higher Municipal Property Assessment Corporation assessments, which are used to set taxes, he points out.
Tackling this issue has demonstrated how well local chapters of Ontario’s three general farm organizations – the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario and the National Farmers Union – can work together, he says.
“We came together very strongly on this one,” says Parker, adding that pooling efforts on a local level may be an approach the groups could use in the future on other issues.
Henry Stevens, the CFFO’s president and a former president of the organization’s Wellington district, also expresses interest in working with the other groups in future, but stresses he “supports one message but not one voice.”
Stevens reserves comment on council’s plans to propose an amendment to the bylaw, noting nothing official has yet been approved. BF