Quote:
Originally Posted by craftbeerdad
All the indirect benefits far outweigh some fee. The city should kiss Mac's ass for what they've done to reinvigorate and redefine the city from a meddling basket case towards progress and belief in growth.
I swear any of us could run for mayor and get more done towards progress.
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McMaster is a massive boon to the City of Hamilton. It is not only one of the largest employers but it attracts tens of thousands students sometimes from around the globe into Hamilton seeding talent and skilled employees graduating from post secondary. McMaster and the medical relationship it has fostered is one of the major reasons Hamilton is where it is today.
While it's unfortunate to lose out on some money, as I mentioned I'm not a fan of development charges in general. They create more upfront cost to blocking development, when the things DCs pay for could just be rolled into property taxes, and should be. DCs are also part of the reason municipalities allow garbage developments, because they get a quick inflow of cash, rather than properly budgeting things through property taxes.
The situation is even worse with residential. Let's say a condo is developed and the condos are on average $300,000. If the DCs are on average $50,000 per unit, then the purchase needs to pay $350,000. The more DCs the higher the price of the condo unit.
Let's say the value of homes in the area go up by an average of 2.2%. That means the $350,000 condo is now worth $357,700 while the condo without DCs would be $306,600. The second owner now needs to spend the prior amount to purchase the unit second hand, but none of the money is put into DCs now, it's just the second owner paying the first owner for the DCs.
Now the developer is not like to save all the DCs for the purchase, but DCs in my opinion, further increase average prices of units, leading to value increase across the board. If this were rolled into property taxes, there would be a continuous stream of revenue, and it would keep housing prices a bit lower.
The only DCs that should be paid are when a building goes grossly over a height limit leading to issues that need to be paid for. If an area can sustain a 25 storey building and the developer wants 40, that's fine, but there would need to be significantly charges to upgrade capacity of things around the property. The goal of density is to reduce cost on municipalities and use land more efficiently. If a property is using existing supply it should have less upfront cost as it is simply utilizing the existing services, but if it exceeds that, then there should be costs associated.