Hike in development charges planned for Angus area
By Richard Blanchard

Essa council will likely pass a new bylaw hiking development charges at next week's council meeting.

But the new bylaw increase will only see an increase in development charges for new houses in the Angus area, to pay for the costs of upgrading the area's municipal water services.

The uniform township wide development charge of $7,320 will remain unchanged from the rate set in 2004, as will the $11,728 cost of hooking up to the sanitary sewers in Angus.

But the charge for hooking up to water in Angus will increase by 58.6 per cent from $2,284 to $3,230 per unit.

In addition, all new housing units will have to pay the county's development charge which amounts to $3,425 per single or semidetached unit.

"Overall, it amounts to a 6.3 per cent increase in development charges for homes in the Angus area," said mayor Dave Guergis. "I think that we are still pretty competitive with other surrounding municipalities in terms of development charges."

All municipalities are required to have development charges which ensure that the financial burden of servicing new development is not borne by existing ratepayers.