Almost unanimously, Belleville council has supported motion by Councillor Paul Carr to not force existing homeowners to hook up to city water and sewer services being extended past their properties to make way for new development.
At present a by-law is on the books making service connections mandatory when city services pass a property and it can cost the homeowner anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000.
Most councillors including Tyler Allsopp agreed with Carr that forcing the charges on existing homeowners was unfair and simply not affordable.
“We’d be asking citizens who are maybe just scraping by to put up this extra money to connect when they don’t have any need to do so and it certainly wasn’t anything they had previously planned.”
Carr called for a recorded vote on his motion. Voting in favour were Mayor Neil Ellis and councillors Enright-Miller, Malette, Allsopp, Brown, Carr, and Chatten.
Only Councillor Garnet Thompson voted against saying he’d prefer existing homeowners be mandated to pay the city’s connection charge (currently around $12,000) so the city could recoup at least some of the costs of extending services. However, he did not want to force homeowners to pay for the connection from the property line into the home which can cost much more than the city’s connection charge.
Below is the motion made by Councillor Paul Carr regarding city water/sewer service extensions and existing property owners.
” … by-law 2019-183 being a by-law to impose water and sanitary sewer charges to recover the capital costs to install water and/or sanitary sewer works in the urban service area be amended by amending the “connection charge imposed” section to read that the owner of a pre-existing constructed residence shall have an indeterminate period of time from the date of notice to construct and install at the owner’s expense a private service connection to connect to a water works and sanitary sewer works and that the wording “shall become mandatory” be removed as it pertains to pre-existing constructed residences and that when notice from the city is provided, the homeowner can decline such services and can complete a waiver to the satisfaction of the city.”
