Quinte West City Council approved a motion from Councillor Zack Card to look into the City of Quinte West’s agreement with the Quinte Home Builders’ Association (QHBA) regarding deferrals of development charges.
Councillor Card’s notice of motion calls for staff to look into the agreement signed in 2018 that would allow home builders to defer paying the development charges for a period of six months from the building permit being issued or occupancy of the home.
“The reason for the motion specifically now is that the six-month time limit is arguably not sufficient for some of the new missing middle builds that our housing needs assessment has identified.”
“So a longer time period, for example, 12 months is often needed for large detached or semis, multiplexes, certainly apartment buildings… six months just isn’t necessarily as helpful for a lot of these projects that we want to see get done. So I didn’t specify extending it to 12 months in the agreement specifically, because I didn’t want to lock staff in on that specific detail. Wanted to let QHBA and staff kind of hash out the specifics, and not necessarily force specific points.”
Council voted in favour of having staff look into the agreement and bring back a report to council on whether they should move forward with the current 2018 agreement or look at proposed changes.
The report will be brought to council at a future meeting.
