WESTLOCK — Westlock residents will see small increases in utility rates in the coming year, a brand new permit fee for solar installation and recreation while community services fees remain status quo.
Changes in the annual fees and rates were adopted when Town of Westlock councillors unanimously voted 5-0 to pass the rates and fees bylaw during the Dec. 11 regular council meeting, which will come into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
CAO Simone Wiley said the town passes its annual bylaw at the same time as the budget because there are “some things in there that go hand in hand with the passing of the new budget.” In doing so, the consolidated fees and rates bylaw was amended to align with the proposed 2024 operating budget with updated wording and fee changes.
“Many of the proposed changes are some wording changes, just to better align with the new land-use bylaw and how we process permits,” planning and development manager Danielle Pougher said, noting the “right-sizing” of some fees to adjust for additional staff time to complete complicated reviews such as housing units with more than one unit and non-residential development of larger scale, among others.
“All of our safety codes fees except for a few had not been updated within the last 10 years so we worked with our safety codes contractor, Superior, to right-size those to adjust for inflation and their costs as well,” explained Pougher, noting one other change included the addition of a specific fee for accessory buildings under non-residential (development permits).
“That’s to align those types of permits with similar ones under residential, so that they benefit from a lower fee for those smaller applications as well,” she said.
Some of those new development and construction permit fee changes include a proposed rate (excluding GST) of $100 plus $50 per unit for residential new construction (with two or more units) and a residential addition permit fee of $100. Another new fee will apply to renewals (12 months) for temporary portable signs with a fee of $50.
Most electrical and plumbing permit fees are also increasing by $10 with the exception of a brand new $200 permit fee for solar installations and utility rates will also see a small increase, and while recreation and community services fees remain status quo, they will see some changes in how they are administered.
“There have been quite a few changes in recreation and community services” Wiley said and pointed out the example of Kali’s Korner, which was relocated to the lobby of the Rotary Spirit Centre, and no longer has a fee associated with it.
“For the most part, these are additions and breakouts of fees that we already have,” said Wiley. “Predominantly, there is no increase to recreation fees, these are additions of different levels of service — we are breaking them out to be able to provide those rates and being a little bit more flexible in how we rent out our facility in some cases as well.”
She also noted the changes to utility rates.
“Water distribution rates proposed increase runs from $1.17 (on single-family residential) to $1.62 on commercial/industrial and then institutional is $2.27 and correspondingly the sewer collection fee rises with that,” said Riley, noting a small decrease in the Regional Waste Management Commission fee that the town pays.
The sewer collection, treatment and disposal rate increase for single-family residential will increase by almost $2 per meter from $4.91 to $6.90 and for commercial/industrial will increase by almost $3 per meter from $6.83 to 9.80.
"Keeping rec fees status quo is a really important measure to ensure that our facilities remain accessible," Acting Mayor Murtaza Jamaly said.
Coun. Randy Wold commented that “breaking (fees) out looks a lot more structured and organized” … and he was happy “we were not looking at increasing anything in recreation for this year.”
