麻豆视频

The City of Weyburn will be instituting a new development levy on new developments in the city, which should help the city as they move forward with growth in dealing with the infrastructure that has to accompany new subdivisions for homes or for business.

While on the face of it, the fees are taking a huge jump, from $40,000 an acre up to $86,000 an acre, but costs for everything have gone up, particularly where infrastructure is concerned. The main question here can be boiled down to that of, how much should the city taxpayers be covering or subsidizing, or how much should developers be paying for when they propose to build a whole new subdivision to help the city continue to grow.

According to what infrastructure (like roads, water, sewer, power and gas) will be needed for the many new projects proposed or begun in or around the city, the cost to build all these services will be around $169.4 million; to have the development levy or charge at $86,000 an acre sounds like a lot, but it's still only covering half of the development costs. Even just to decrease the fee to $85,000 would add just under $1 million on to taxpayers.

The increase was enough to give pause for at least one city councillor, who admitted he was in favour of the increase two weeks ago, but now was not so sure. One of his objections is, he's afraid that putting the development fees way up will stall or stop growth and development in Weyburn.

If a developer wants to make a go of it in the city by building homes and setting up new neighbourhoods, wouldn't one think they would raise an objection if they had one?

One developer was present at the council meeting and did not see anything wrong with the proposed fee; in addition, council had received a letter from another developer who likewise didn't see a problem with it.

In addition, council was informed that Estevan was putting their development at around $92,000, and Regina's is over $97,000, so Weyburn comes off looking pretty good.

The bottom line is, there is a cost to grow and expand, and add new neighbourhoods, and not everything can be paid for by current residents. Developers have to take on some of those costs as a cost of doing business, so when the new residents need water or sewer, it's available to them.