County turns down refund on development charge
by Richard Blanchard

Simcoe County council has turned down a request from a New Tecumseth resident who wanted a refund of her development charges.

Diane Brozina asked County council Thursday to refund $3,293 of development charges which she was charged for her building permit.

Brozina submitted her application for a building permit on August 21 and argued that her permit would have been issued before Sept. 1 except for delays from the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority (NVCA) and New Tecumseth.

Simcoe County implemented its development charges policy on Sept. 1, 2006.

"My application was processed after Sept. 1 so I have to pay the development charge. It's not my fault that the work was processed after Sept. 1, because staff were on holidays or sick," Brozina argued.

"I applied before Sept. 1 to avoid the charge and I'm here because I was charged for it and shouldn't have been." Her permit was finally issued in October of last year.

A chronology of the application process showed that the documentation submitted on August 21 lacked heat loss calculations and sanitary sewage design documents which required NVCA approval.

New Tecumseth mayor Mike McEachern said that a review of the application process by the town has shown that some key pieces of information were missing from the application.

Other members of county council argued that Ms. Brozina had made her best efforts to fulfill the conditions for the application.

Ramara deputy mayor Basil Clarke argued that the applicant had done all that she could to complete the necessary paperwork before the Sept. 1 cutoff date. "The delays were not within her power."

But Essa mayor Dave Guergis said that expecting that a permit would be issued within 10 days of application was not giving the municipality a lot of time. "I think that it would take more than ten days under usual circumstances. If the application had been made in July, I would probably be more sympathetic."

He noted that Essa had a similar situation when a builder submitted a plan for four new homes just before the deadline and didn't have the correct studies. "I think that we 're looking at some problems if we start waiving development charges on applications,"

County council voted narrowly not to refund the development charges to Brozina.