City of Greater Sudbury looking at reducing development charges within municipality

The City of Greater Sudbury is looking into different options to reduce development charges in the municipality to encourage more growth in the city.

Development charges are fees paid by the developer to help cover the cost of adding municipal services into new development areas, such as roads, parks, transit and water and sewer services.

These fees were discussed at the finance and administration committee meeting on Thursday.

Currently the city is looking at three different options to reduce these fees:

• Reducing calculated development charges by 50 per cent — charges are calculated by looking at the cost of adding municipal services in that area.
• Including additional exemptions — currently certain types of developments, such as low income housing, are exempt from development charges.
• Reduced rates for certain types of development — rather than reducing all development charges, certain types will have lower rates.

"Municipalities use those because the premise is that growth will pay for itself, that through these charges, existing tax and rate payers don't have to pay for the costs of new infrastructure that supports the growth that helps the community as a whole from an employment perspective or from a quality of life perspective," said the city's Chief Administrative Officer, Ed Archer.

The community is invited to share their opinions on the different options for reducing development fees at the May 7 city council meeting or by going online to overtoyou.greatersudbury.ca. 

Council will make its final decision on the development charges on May 28.