Common Planning Fallacies #3
A new installment of Tony Cooke's common planning fallacies series:
Fallacy #3: "Our Development Cost Charges are too high. They deter development and should be lower."Also see #1 and #2.
Tony's comment: "We’re not in a competition with other communities where the one with the most development wins. I believe Development Cost Charges are still too low. Shouldn’t D.C.C.’s be sufficient to cover all the infrastructure costs that are the result of development? For example, as Summerland grows we need to spend millions upgrading our water supply and millions more improving the road network. Money should be set aside from D.C.C.s to cover these costs. Instead, the Municipality borrows large sums of money and all taxpayers end up paying for the infrastructure upgrades. Shouldn’t developers pay for all the long term upgrades, direct and indirect, their developments make necessary?"
posted by Jeremy |
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1 Comments:
Sounds exactly right to me. I really like your point about not being on a development competition with other towns.
The developers of the seniors village in front of our place are putting in a length of sidewalk from the corner to the edge of their property. But there's no sidewalk down the hill to the IGA mall, so that length of new sidewalk is useless -- it goes nowhere.
Since the population of our immediate neighbourhood will be going up a fair bit as a result of this development (and others nearby), the district will eventually have to put the sidewalk all the way through to Prairie Valley Road. But why isn't that expense tied directly to the development costs?
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Jeremy, at 1:26 p.m.
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