Sudbury development charges increasing 17.2% in July

As of July 1, development charges in the City of Greater Sudbury will increase by 17.2 per cent, something that one city councillor says is disappointing.

"That’s why I introduced the motion to use a 4.4, which I was using the Canadian price index that we used for our user fees," said Bill Leduc, Sudbury Ward 11 councillor.

"Right now, as we’re seeing gas prices, commodities, construction materials, they’ve all gone through the roof and I just don’t feel that the new home buyers or the developers can handle a $3,000 increase at this time."

Since no statistics are released for Sudbury specifically, the inflationary change for Ottawa is used to calculate the increase.

Local builder John Zulich told CTV News he doesn’t believe the increase will affect the market, at least not right away.

"It's about a half percent on a $700,000 build and so it's not going to stop a lot of people who are approved and available to buy," Zulich said.

Currently, new builds are in demand but should that change, he said hopes city council would step up to the plate.

"In 2011 and 12 we had a great boom in the city. 2015 hit and it was getting slow and there were calls from the home builders in town saying 'remove development charges or defer them for a number of years to help support the industry' because, at that point, homes weren’t competing with the resale market," Zulich said.

"They didn’t, as a result, not wholly their fault. I mean the market had a lot to do with it but a lot of builders left. They went and found other things to do at the time. They became renovators. They moved to other municipalities. A lot of the trades moved down south and we lost a lot of really good people who are available to build homes for us."

Leduc said city council will look at development charges again in 2023 and he said he hopes at that point the city can do better.

"I understand that development charges pay for growth but if you start pricing yourself out of the market, you’re not going to have growth. And I want to see Sudbury grow," Leduc added.

"We have a great opportunity here to grow now that people are working in this hybrid model. We are seeing people from southern Ontario move to northern Ontario and Sudbury and this gives us a great opportunity."