Council rejects bid to avoid development fee
Burned-out home sat empty for 20 years before demolition, so new fees apply
Jim Orr complained to Trent Hills council on Tuesday that he shouldn’t have to pay about $20,000 in development fees for a new home he is building on County Road 35, because he was simply replacing a burned-out family home that had been built in the 1850s.
But council rejected the complaint and kept the development charges in place after learning that the home had caught fire about 20 years ago and sat vacant until this year.
Orr argued that the bylaw was unclear when it said a burned-out home had to be rebuilt within five years in order to avoid development fees.
“It doesn’t say five years from when,” Orr said.
“It clearly means fives years from the fire,” Deputy Mayor Mike Metcalf responded.
“Could you have lived in the burned-out building?” Metcalf asked. “If not, it was not a residential building.”
Orr said that the demolition permit he received for the old house had a two-year time limit and he acted quickly. He received the permit in July of this year and demolished the structure in August.
But the kicker for councillors was when Chief Building Officer Stephen White said he had checked property tax records with MPAC and found that in 2006 after the fire, the property had been redesignated from rural residential to agricultural.
White said that change would only have happened if Orr appealed to MPAC.
White said Orr would have saved about $17,000 in taxes since then because he hadn’t been paying the residential rate.
Council unanimously agreed that the development fee had to be paid.
Average tax bills will rise about $105
The draft budget presented to council on Tuesday included an example of how much extra the owner of a house assessed at $250,000 would pay. But since an extra $80,000 in spending was added to that draft before it was passed, the example was no longer accurate.
So, I asked Treasurer Christina Beaushaw to clarify. She says, “the estimated tax rate impact at this time is 4.8% or $42.23 on a $100,000 worth of assessment.”
That means on a house assessed at $250,000 the municipal portion of its taxes would increase $105.57 to $2,302.99, up from $2,197.35.
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