Goderich Council approved a significant increase in its development charges at Tuesday night's meeting.
Matt Pearson, senior planner with B.M. Ross, explained to council what they could justify to cover their costs for new development, adding council could decide to charge less but not more than that amount.
That figure sees residential development charges go from just over $200 to a little over $2,100 over two years for a single, detached home.
Pearson points out that's still considerably lower than most neighbouring municipalities.
Pearson also pointed out in the past there has been a belief that municipalities kept their development charges low in order to be competitive with their neighbours regardless of their costs but he says experience doesn't bear that out.
He also pointed out that council does have the option of lowering that fee.
"It's up to council and this council wasn't interested in that at all; other council's might be," says Pearson. "They think they have to be competitive with the development charge, competitive with the surrounding municipalities because somebody's going to build there because they're cheaper; we've found as time and development charges have been around for twenty-five years, this is not the case."
Pearson says most municipalities set their development charges to recover their costs and support their budget and development charges are not usually a major factor in determining where people choose to live.
Commercial development charges also went up and they're based on square feet and will also be phased in.
