The Town of High River is in the middle of a review of their offsite levies.

Engineering Manager, Riley McKerracher says it's something they have to do periodically.

"Just to make sure all the costing is right, the project list is right, along with the new MGA (Municipal Government Act), we can actually charge for more things than historically we could. Fire halls, libraries, Rec-facilities, couldn't be charged under the old MGA but after they updated last days, they can now be charged within the levies."

McKerracher says High River developers will be looking at a hefty hike in those levies.

"It is a fairly significant increase but to help with that we're phasing that in over three years. So the step on a year to year basis isn't "crazy huge" like it would have been."

Offsite levies, are charged to developers building new communities in town, and not to ratepayers in existing communities.

He says they updated their infrastructure master plans, and in this case utilities master plan, and updated levies to reflect that.

"The utility master plan, what it does is take a snapshot in time of all our water, wastewater and storm water systems. Identifies what needs to be repaired. What's getting kind of old. What's going to be needed for future development, and then itemize that. Then based on that list, we put costing on it, and that's the basis for our offsite levies."

A public hearing on the new levies will go, on Monday, January 28 at the next Town Council meeting.

 

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