Vernon Councillor calls for policy to determine when a lifecycle cost is needed for developments

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“[The policy] would include the following, a terms of reference, scape and minimum requirement for each report; the stage of the application that the reports are to be submitted and presented to Council; determine the responsibility for funding, selecting and overseeing the development of the reports; and identifies the professional credentials and qualifications required of the hired firms or experts,” Quiring outlined during the council meeting before explaining his position.

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“When you ask for a Lifecycle Cost Analysis, that’s good, but when you don’t ask for the other side of the financial statements, which can, in some cases, defend the decision to accept the Lifecycle Cost Analysis, if you don’t have that you’re only working with half the information. So I’m just saying that, for the future, this would be a good decision as there’s two sides to this equation.”

Councillor Brian Guy supported having a policy for a Lifecycle Cost Analysis “in certain circumstances” depending on a proposed project’s location, stating “what really matters is the distance to [the downtown] core, the presence or absence of infrastructure and services, and the density of the proposed development.”

Guy argued against requiring an Economic Impact Assessment as that could be delivered by a developer at any point of time during a project process. He also said construction costs would not change depending on where a project is built in the community, and having more people move to the city bring economic benefit no matter the neighbourhood they live. 

Quiring disagreed with Guy, saying “for every dollar we spend on infrastructure it costs the community $1.30 to maintain” and the Lifecycle Cost Analysis and Economic Impact Assessment do relate to each other and show the costs versus the benefits of major projects. He also acknowledged that a developer could deliver an Economic Impact Assessment at any point but said it would be beneficial to have it earlier in the process, pointing to the Commonage project as one where it wasn’t delivered as the developer had expected to at least go to a public hearing stage where that could have been presented.

Mayor Victor Cumming also stated having an Economic Impact Assessment’s benefits would be “speculative,” as values can fluctuate over the course of construction and beyond.

Quiring again disagreed with removing the Economic Impact Assessment from the policy, but did amend his motion to maintain the requirement for a Lifecycle Cost Analysis and “leave it to [the developer’s] discretion to come back [to Council] with evidence that supports your development on an economic basis.”

Council voted unanimously in support of having the city develop a policy requiring a Lifecycle Cost Analysis and an economic report be including in applications for Official Community Plan amendments. Staff will report back with a draft policy in September.