CANMORE – A new reserve fund could potentially help development applications be processed more quickly in Canmore without requiring additional tax resources.
Town council approved the creation of a development application reserve fund that will see application revenue kept in the new reserve as opposed to being filtered into general reserves.
The intent of the fund is to help support work in both the planning and development and engineering departments such as staffing, additional resources, one-time operating costs, capital expenses and to stabilize the operating budget.
“With planning and engineering both on the development application side of things where we rely on application revenue coming in, it means we typically have pretty conservative budget estimates,” said Whitney Smithers, the Town’s general manager of municipal infrastructure. “We underrepresent what we anticipate coming in for application fees because we can’t really afford to overrepresent because we can’t run a deficit.”
Since municipalities can’t budget for a deficit under the Municipal Government Act, it leaves planning and engineering planning for less work than what often comes in. Smithers said it leads to a “vicious cycle” of being under-resourced for the work needed to be completed.
She said application revenue is only considered for the first year, but work often takes several years. She gave the example of a large subdivision application beginning in 2020 – when the revenue is taken in – but work continuing until 2023, but no revenue is received.
The fund would be able to cover any deficit and also allows contracts to be brought on to help during periods of high levels of submissions.
The fund, however, wouldn’t be used to help with full-time staffing costs since it would require a business case, according to a staff report to council. Anything that is financed by the fund will also be shown, according to the report.
Smithers said the fund would have a cap of 50 per cent of the annual budgeted fee based expenditures for the planning and engineering departments.
“We’re going with the best information and the best current thinking we have that might change over time," she said. "It would still be council’s discretion to maybe redirect a surplus in a given year. It could also be a trigger for us to dive in and take a look at the fee structure.”
The Town’s reserves policy was established in 2017 and has been amended several times since, most recently last August. Under the policy, any decision made to a reserve has to be decided by council.
“We’ve been chatting around this and around the issues this creates for the planning department and how to solve it, so I think this is a great stab at a solution,” said Coun. Joanna McCallum.
A March 21 letter from Bow Valley Builders and Developers Association (BOWDA) supported the creation of the reserve fund.
The letter highlighted that a member survey in February and March showed permit application timelines and approvals and service capacity were a risk to member businesses and future success.
It stated BOWDA was encouraged by it helping to improve predictability, more funding available for short- and medium-term business planning, greater efficiency in delivering services and responding to industry needs with potentially better staffing levels.
“We do hope that there is further clarity as to a cap for this potential fund and a strategy on the most effective use of the funds to address resource needs,” wrote Ian O’Donnell, BOWDA’s executive director. “This aligns well with the Town’s continued process improvement work to help provide clarity, transparency and efficiency in their business planning.”
Mayor Sean Krausert praised the initiative that could potentially help process development applications, while not adding an extra burden to taxes.
“I think this is something that could’ve helped a long time ago,” he said. “I think it’s something that’s going to smooth the ebbs and flows when we have high volumes of work and perhaps need to be bringing in a term contract and when there’s lower volumes of work it helps smooths things out. It’s definitely forward thinking and I think it’s going to help going forward.”
