Pitt Meadows is bumping its amenity charges back up to the 2017 rate, when builders and developers were still paying for the South Bonson Community Centre.
At that point, developers were paying $4,500 for each single family home or $4,000 for each townhouse they built, and $3,000 for each apartment in a new residential development that required rezoning.
However, the South Bonson Community Centre was paid off this year and, as a result, amenity fees dropped to $2,100 for a detached house and $2,800 for a townhouse.
The policy that council approved on March 6 simply raised the fees back to the previous level, where fees were still being collected for South Bonson.
The city collects the amenity contributions as a way of paying for public art projects, parks and trails, public buildings, heritage or conservation projects or affordable housing.
It just started collecting the fees in 2017 following Maple Ridge’s implementation of amenity fees.
Usually, development cost charges paid by builders cover the costs of roads and sewers, while the more recent amenity contributions pay for the softer services and features required in a community.
Lisa Grant, manager of community development, noted that amenity fees are voluntarily paid by developers and are not compulsory.
Development applications can be filed with the city without paying such contributions, if the developer so chooses.
But the majority of developers opt to pay the contributions because they help build the complete communities and, in turn, help increase the value of them.
Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge both have a policy of charging flat fees for community amenity contributions so developers know at the start how much they’ll have to pay.
Some cities, though, still negotiate amenity fees on a development-by-development basis.
Pitt Meadows doesn’t yet know how much money annually such contributions will bring to the city. The fees were based on a formula that roughly attempts to recover, for the city, half of the increase in value of a property after rezoning. That amount is then divided into a per unit basis.
Most cities had community amenity charges in place when Maple Ridge first started charging its community amenity contributions in 2016. Those contributions now sit at $5,100 per single family lot or $4,100 per townhouse or $3,100 per apartment in Maple Ridge.