Building fees are too low

Ottawa taxpayers are subsidizing developers by more than $4 million a year because the city charges less for development fees than other Ontario municipalities.

The Ottawa city to take immediate steps to raise the fees and recover the full costs, but Ottawa levies some of the highest fees in the country and any attempt to increase them will lead to higher home prices.

The Ottawa city has about 25 different fees on everything from zoning and engineering to conservation and committee of adjustment procedures. By the time it is all tallied up, a residential subdivision could cost between $35,000 and $40,000 just to get started, while a plan for a condominium often starts at about $12,000.

Ottawa has one of the highest fees in the country and the last thing they need to do is increase them. If they increase fees, buiders are increasing new housing costs. If people think the city is going to hurt builders by increasing fees, they are wrong. It is going to hurt homebuyers.

The city reviews more than 800 development applications a year, and about 1,700 development agreements require monitoring and enforcement that involves several agencies and departments. The auditor general says despite the enormous work and cost involved, little effort is made to recoup the full cost from developers. The planning department has been recovering less than two-thirds of the cost compared with 85% to 100 % in other Ontario cities, and the shortfall costs taxpayers at least $4.3 million a year.

It is a conservative estimate and it could be more in a fee increase.

The Ottawa city doesn't charge the full cost of fees for development projects because the tradition inherited by the new city was to bill developers for 60% of the costs.

Ottawa city staff are "consistently slow" in processing development applications, describing their performance as sub-optimal.

A high Ottawa city official has finally acknowledged a problem that builders have been complaining about for years, and that he is proposing solutions. However, the auditor general is failing to see: the cost-recovery problem is not due to low fees collected by the city, but instead is caused by the much higher staff costs arising out of a bloated bureaucracy.

The fact that they are taking two or three times longer than normal to approve development applications is the reason their costs are high. They don't need more money. We think the auditor general got it right when he said development approvals take much longer, but he has failed to recognize that it is their costs that are too high.

The 2007 audit also confirmed criticism that the city's earlier growth projections were inflated, noting that new figures released last year were more realistic.

It also found that 13% of new building permits issued by the city did not conform to the provincial building code, and while this raises concerns about safety, city staff say the problem, which has to do with the practice of issuing conditional building permits for projects that have not yet been fully vetted, has nothing to do with public safety. Often a builder would be allowed to go ahead with a project even though all the requirements have not yet been met, but city ensures that all conditions are met before the building gets final clearance.

The issue with the building code is about process.

Ottawa Drops to #19 on City Ranking

Ottawa has slipped from 18th to 19th place in a survey of the best places to live in the world, but those who administer the survey say the change is hardly worth mentioning.

The capital was one of five Canadian cities ranked by Mercer, a company that does the survey to help governments and corporations decide where to send employees on international assignments. It released results for 215 of the 350 cities it surveys. Cities are given a point-scoring index, with New York City offering a base number of 100.

Zurich was ranked as the best city in which to live, with a score of 108, while Ottawa was at 104.7, down from last year's score of 104.8.

It's a minor change. This is not meaningful in any way. There's nothing noticeably different in the quality of life for people living in Ottawa. Ottawa still ranks higher than 90% of the 215 cities sampled.

Vancouver was the most desirable Canadian city in which to live, placing 4th in the world, while Toronto remained in the same position as last year -- at 15th -- and Montreal remained in the 22nd spot. Calgary took 25th place, down from 24th last year. Cities are ranked according to their political stability, economic and socio-cultural environment, health and sanitation, schools and education, public services and transportation, recreation, consumer goods, housing and natural environment.

Mercer also conducts a personal safety survey and all five Canadian cities tied for 22nd place. Luxembourg was deemed the safest city in which to live, while Baghdad ranked 215th.

European cities dominated the upper echelons of the quality-of-life survey, with Zurich coming 1st, followed by Vienna and Geneva. Besides Vancouver, other cities in the top 10 included Auckland, Dusseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, Bern and Sydney. That means Switzerland and Germany each had three cities in the Top 10.

The Top 3 U.S. cities were Honolulu, in 28th spot, San Francisco in 29th place, and Boston in 37th.