By Tiffany Goodwein

City of Vernon lowers development cost charges while other cities see a spike

Jan 13, 2020 | 5:09 PM

It’s about to cost a little less to develop land in the city of Vernon.

Vernon city council approved changes to the city’s development cost charge bylaw at its council meeting on Monday.

A development cost charge is cash the developer needs to pay the city for each individual unit, or lot they build, and the charges are used to help fund transportation, water, sewer, drainage, and parks costs.

“What that pays for is the future building of infrastructure that is required because they’ve used some of it, like there will be more people on the roads so therefore we have to fix the road, well you prepay that as a development cost charge,” explained Vernon Mayor Victor Cumming who added that development cost charges usually impact the overall price of new units in the city.

The approved changes mean development costs for a single family home will drop 16.2 per cent from $16,460 to $13,766. Apartments, row homes, commercial buildings and industrial buildings will also see a decrease in their per metre squared unit cost.

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Cumming said the move is rare given other nearby communities see their developments costs go up year after year. In Oct. 2019, the city of Kelowna approved a $7,180 increase to their development cost charges as part of a new parks development fee. The city of Penticton is eyeing a 40 per cent increase to their development cost charges, which are currently undergoing a review.

The changes to Vernon’s DCC bylaw eliminated projects that go beyond 20 years and those that are no longer required. Completed projects were scrapped and now include new projects which aim to support the city’ growth in the next 20 years, ” creating a realistic shorter term for accountability and construction expectations.”

“They looked very carefully at all the future roads, water systems, sewers, parks that will be needed and they realized that some of those things talked about historically probably wouldn’t happen, so they eliminated those, they narrowed roadways because the wider the roads the more it costs to develop, so they narrowed roadways and they made it very specific about what they see needing in the future,” Mayor Cumming told Vernon Matters.

According to a media release, approval of the development cost charges will amount to an a net overall reduction of $103 million in DCC project costs.

by Tiffany Goodwein

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