Growth fees on hold in Winnipeg, but it's not clear how long

Winnipeg's growth-fee plan has been placed on hold, but Mayor Brian Bowman won't rule out the idea of bringing in the new charges as early as New Year's Day.

City council's executive policy committee voted Wednesday to put off a vote on a growth-fee plan Winnipeg's development and construction industry has panned as hastily assembled and seriously flawed.

On Wednesday morning, 13 industry representatives spent 2½ hours unleashing a litany of concerns about the proposed fees, which would add $18,300 to the cost of an 1,800-square-foot residential home and also increase costs for commercial and industrial developments.

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That plan called for the fees to be imposed as soon as Jan. 1. But the executive policy committee voted to put the fees on hold for an undetermined period of time to allow property, planning and development committee chair John Orlikow (River Heights-Fort Garry) to co-ordinate discussions with other city councillors, developers and construction companies.

"Coun. Orlikow will continue to have dialogue with industry stakeholders, with council colleagues, and we'll see how the discussions go," Bowman said after the meeting.

"From a public policy perspective, there was very good information that we were hearing today. I may not agree with all of it, some of it may not have been factually correct, but there was good content that was provided."

The mayor, however, would not say whether the discussions would take days, months or years and would not rule out instituting the fees on Jan. 1. 

The mayor said the city is preparing a budget for 2017 that does not include tens of millions of new revenue from growth fees. But since he and council finance chairman Marty Morantz (Charleswood-Tuxedo) have not ruled out reducing the amount of money the city spends on infrastructure next year, this leaves the door open for council to use the new fees to help balance Winnipeg's budget.

The mayor also said he was not concerned about Premier Brian Pallister's distaste for the new fees or his intention to review Winnipeg's legal authority to institute the charges.

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After the meeting, industry representatives expressed relief the plan was on hold but were not optimistic they would be consulted.

Executives with Genstar, Terracon, Harvard, Qualico, Ventura and other Winnipeg firms spent two hours expressing anger at the absence of meaningful consultation by the city about the fees, the short time frame for discussions that did take place and the quality of the data used by the city to determine whether they should proceed with charges and how much those charges should be.

"I'm confident if a developer brought forward a project through a process like this, we'd be told to go back and start again," said Veronica Eno of Harvard Developments.

Mike Moore of the Manitoba Home Builders Association, who stood beside Bowman following a closed-door meeting between the mayor and developers, appeared before the executive policy committee to say no meaingful consultations were conducted.

He said said the complexity of the deal would require many more meetings taking place over many months in order to come up with a plan beneficial to both the city and developers.

Meyers Norris Penny consultant Kathryn Graham also presented an analysis of the city-commissioned study that concluded new developments do not pay for themselves. Graham said the validity of the study is suspect because it inflated Winnipeg's population-growth estimates as well as capital-cost projections.

Homestead Manitoba director Vic Janzen, whose firm builds assisted-living units, said the proposed fees may kill his small firm's projects. He said developers have been demonized in the eyes of ordinary taxpayers and more attention must be paid to planning considerations.

Terracon Developments' Michael Falk, Winnipeg's largest industrial developer, said the proposed fees will drive businesses from the city and are in effect a tax on jobs. He called the plan "a kick in the pants" to Yes Winnipeg, the organization that attempts to lure businesses to the Manitoba capital.

"There is much meaningful dialogue that has to take place, but it will not take place around this table. It will take many months and many years," he said, calling the fees a tax.

St. Vital Coun. Brian Mayes then asserted it is not a tax, but a fee.

"Quack, quack, quack. It's a duck," Falk responded.