I published the post below early in the year. Thanks to the engineering staff of the City of Vernon who have brought forth a DCC proposal for Council Approval on Monday. Their recommendation exceeds my comment about our DCC rates being at least 30-40% behind. The sector DCC adjustment and further refinements of actual DCC projects will follow hopefully after the adoption of the Official Community Plan. (OCP)
DCC'S Must be PRIORITY of COUNCIL: Jan 7
Maybe the Council will finally make a concerted effort to look at DCC's. We hear that construction costs are rising at the rate of at least 1% per month for the last couple years and will continue in the future. This is the warning sounded if we don't built the new civic complex now. Well as I have been beating the drum for the last couple of years these same construction escalations have put our DCC rates at least 30-40% behind. Based on our 2006 DCC's charged of $3,474,279 (2005 $ 3,188,039) we have left almost $1,000,000 on the table each of the last two years and a whole bunch more in the future until this leakage is stopped. It is imperative that the top priority of this Council in the last year of their Mandate is a rate change to existing DCC's followed by a revision to the method of charging DCC's . (Sector DCC's, Secondary Suite DCC's, etc.) Most cities have reviewed their DCC's on a regular basis, (Kelowna has just finished their annual review) while Vernon has done little to address their out of date costing of existing projects that are DCC elgible, adjusted their method of charging to reflect present day reality and long term planning or protected the taxpayers from having to pay more than their share of infrastructure growth.
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