In October 2023, the Town of Cobourg confirmed a decision to change how the cost of Stormwater management would be recovered. Instead of embedding in taxes, it would be a fee related to usage. But the formula adopted to decide on the fee was unfair to some property owners and setting a fully comprehensive fee knowing runoff for every property would be onerous and costly. But responding to complaints, the Town put the fee collection on hold – at least for some people – and commissioned a review. At the Council meeting on 26 June 2024, Council decided to implement Option B of the resulting consultant’s report – basically, this mandates a fairly low flat rate for all residences and higher amounts for large Commercial, Industrial and institutional properties.
In my case (a condo townhouse), my rate will go up from $23.88 per year to $87.35 per year. To be clear – all residences, farms, vacant land and cemeteries will now pay $87.35 per year – this is a big reduction for many. But Commercial, Institutional and Industrial property types above 0.040469 Hectares (1 acre) will pay $2,102 per hectare although the wording of the by-law is not clear. Exempted from paying are Town owned properties and Schools. Properties in industrial parks (Northam and Lucas Point) are “factored in”; that is, they pay the fee. Not exempt are churches with properties larger than 1 acre. The unclear wording was highlighted in a presentation by Dick Kauling so Nicole Beatty moved to amend the motion to approve the By-law such that when rates are adjusted for 2025, that the enabling bylaw consider Dick’s suggested changes. Dick’s list of changes was not made available to the public.
The new bylaw is effective 1 January 2023 and one provision of the new by-law is that refunds for people who have been charged more than provided by the new by-law would be refunded the excess. There are 1601 properties eligible for refunds with 1260 of them with refunds less than $300. To reduce the administrative load of writing cheques and mailing them out, the bylaw provides that only those owed more than $300 would get cheques, The others would get a credit on their bill.
A presentation by Colline Bell said that she was happy with the new by-law except that she wants all those owed refunds to be sent cheques. However, Council passed the by-law unchanged.
Another item on the meeting Agenda was to consider who should do the billing of water, wastewater and stormwater: LUSI as now, the Town or a third party identified with an RFP? The review was no doubt prompted by a new draft Billing Services Agreement from Lakefront Utility Services Inc with increased rates. The idea of looking at options was raised by the Treasurer Adam Giddings and Lucas expressed appreciation for the effort by Staff to try and find cost savings. The estimated cost of having the Town do the billing would be $174K per year instead of LUSI at $223K per year. The cost of a third party would be determined by an RFP. This does not include start up costs in the first year and includes hiring an employee dedicated to billing. (Download the full analysis in Resources). But when it came to choosing, with little debate, Council chose to stay with LUSI with an updated re-negotiated contract.
Resources
Option B – as described in Consultant’s report
Flat rate for all properties up to 1 acre (0.040469 hectares) with additional charges for land area in excess of 1 acre for Commercial, Industrial and institutional properties
Previous Cobourg Blog articles
- Cobourg to now start billing Stormwater fee – 9 October 2023
- Stormwater rate review – See addendum 22 June 2024
- Stormwater Fee Schedule to be reviewed – 2 February 2024 – includes info on objections by taxpayers.
Other Links
- Download Consultants report (review) – pdf
- Download enabling by-law
- Download Billing Services Options report
- Video of Meeting – this topic starts at 5:12:50.
Print Article:
I don’t believe that town owned properties such as Northam and Lucas Point are exempt. See https://pub-cobourg.escribemeetings.com/FileStream.ashx?DocumentId=42812 page 702 of 710 which lists public schools as the only exempt properties.
That said, it appears that town staff have chosen to not bill those who lease town properties such as Memorial Arena (curling club and others), Fire Hall Theatre, Northam (Wheetabix, Cameco, V13, Fare Share, etc). In addition, other businesses such as William Academy are not being billed. This increases the charges for the rest of us and must be corrected.
Information in the Post is taken from words said at the meeting. Specifically, in response to a question from Adam Bureau, Adam Giddings said that properties at Northam have been “factored in” and “they are being charged”. Go to 5:33:30 in the video. Presumably the same applies to Lucas Point Tenants. Perhaps they are paying indirectly through some method? As I have said, the by-law wording is not clear – it seems that Staff are taking direction from Council but they have not accurately documented that. Councillor Miriam Mutton also agrees that Northam tenants will be paying.
John, I’m confused!
You reported that town owned properties are exempt. Mr. Giddings said that town owned properties are not being charged but that Northam is being “factored into the analysis” (whatever that means). The billing data that I obtained through an Freedom of Information (FOI) request indicates that Northam, William Academy, the Fare Share Food bank, the curling club at Memorial Arena and others are not being charged. Appendix A of the bylaw only exempts schools covered by the Education Act.
It seems a simple question: Are all properties paying their fair share?
The by-law as written is in disagreement with what was said at the meeting.
The only way to know, is if the rents increase accordingly.
All else is obfuscation.