Finance committee demands closer look at growth fee impact

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This article was published 03/11/2016 (3011 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Councillors on the city’s finance committee want closer scrutiny of revenues generated from the new impact fee on residential development.

At the proposal of Couns. Scott Gillingham and Janice Lukes – two councillors who voted against the fee plan at council last week – the administration was instructed to provide quarterly updates to the committee on how much revenue the new fee is generating and from what areas of the city.

“This is just a matter of transparency and openness,” Gillingham, chairman of the finance committee said. “The public is very interested in it and my intention is we do all we can to keep this very open and transparent.”

When council approved the new charge on residential development in select suburban areas, the administration was required to deposit the revenues into a special account which will be used to finance growth-related infrastructure projects in the future. The administration was instructed to track how much money is being raised from each area of the city and make that information available to councillors.

Mayor Brian Bowman said Wednesday that estimated revenues from the fee will be included in the 2017 capital budget but Gillingham (St. James-Brooklands-Weston) said the funds will be accounted in a list of city reserve accounts in the operating budget.

Gillingham added that none of the money raised from the new fee in 2017 will be used to finance any infrastructure-related project in 2017 or to be used to balance the 2017 operating budget.

Lukes (South Winnipeg-St. Norbert) said she is dismayed that regulations governing the impact fee appear to be improvised on a hourly basis, repeating her criticism – which many believe led to her removal from Bowman’s executive policy committee and as a chairwoman of the public works committee – that the plan was rushed and poorly prepared.

Lukes, who had been involved in confidential, backroom 2017 budget planning until her removal from EPC last, said inclusion of impact fee revenue in next year’s budget had never been discussed at private EPC meetings.

“This is an hourly, daily evolution of how we are doing impact fees in Winnipeg,” Lukes said. “This is news to me that this is now going to be in the 2017 budget.”

Lukes said Bowman’s confusion as to how the fee revenue would be accounted for in the budget is a reflection of the poor consultation and planning behind the initiative.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t know what they’re talking about on growth fees,” Lukes said. “This whole process is evolving daily and has not been well thought out – it’s a half-baked process.”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca