Questions raised about LaSalle’s development fee hike

LaSalle is set to charge higher development fees but will do so gradually. CTV Windsor’s Bob Bellacicco reports.

The town of LaSalle is moving ahead with plans to increase development fees and will phase the charges over a two-year period to help avoid dumping on taxpayers.

“It’s a necessary evil,” Dale Langlois, LaSalle’s director of finance told CTV News.

“Unfortunately, the cost of constructing infrastructure has skyrocketed well above the rate of inflation. In some instances, in the last five years, costs have nearly doubled which definitely impacts the development charges.”

Norbert Bolger, Chair of the Windsor Essex Home Builders Association, questions the timing of the fee increase.

“It would be different if people were fighting to get here and everybody want to be in LaSalle or Amherstburg and you can’t build them fast enough,” he explained.

“Then there’s an opportunity to create some money and no, that’s not happening.”

Fees for single and semi-detached homes would go up 30 percent or just over $10,000.

“In 2019, this exact house I’m standing in would have cost around $19,000 today. Today with their proposed increase it’s going to be around $70,000,” said Andrew Lapico of Lapico Custom Homes.

“A house that is 5,000 square-feet compared to a more attainable house at 2,000 square-feet, the development charge is the same so there’s an unequitable burden on the smaller homes and the more attainable housing that has to be built in the city,” Vince Rosati Jr., VP of project development for the Rosati Group, added.

Langlois said growth creates more congestion in the streets of LaSalle which translates into other needs, that lead to extra costs.

“That’s one of the reasons we’re going to be widening Malden Road and development charges are going to be paying for that,” he said.

Developers feel what was bypassed is consideration for the increased tax base from the developments at the current tax rate.

“In the tax base there should be a development reserve that these development charges would be taken care of with,” said Rosati.

Langlois acknowledged the town does receive important tax dollars from the developments.

“But with those new subdivisions we need to collect that garbage, plow those roads, put away to eventually replace those roads so theoretically, the taxes that we get from those new subdivisions to towards operating costs,” he said.

With attainable housing being a major topic, developers say higher development fees go against the national and provincial agendas.

“They wonder why housing is getting so expensive. It’s because we have to pay out $70,000 approximately, before we get a shovel in the ground,” Lapico said.

Bolger said renting is looking more appealing.

“Some people do (want to rent). There’s an absolute need for it, but I think a lot of people are going there because they can’t afford home ownership. Was that not the Canadian dream, to own a home?”