City Council has been discussing the Off-site Development Levy for many months.

On Monday, City Council met and passed the Development Levy Charges Policy which means the Bylaw can be passed.

"It took us another sort of a swing at it with a couple of councillors and myself to ensure that we were meeting not only councils direction on this being a prosperous yet affordable city and at the same time we were fitting the requirements that we have in terms of provincially so we can get the provincial approval to implement this as quickly as possible," explained Roy Hardy, City Manager.

The previous levy for adding to existing properties was set at $12.21 per square foot, and $86,000 per acre.

"It went down to $1.75. We did some analysis on the numbers and found that this was perfectly in line with what council directed in terms of the large numbers and so for smaller projects that occur in terms of where there's no sub-division or where there's improvement or an add-on of a storage or those types of small projects, the $1.75 per square foot will be an adequate development levy," added Hardy.

In case of residential properties, the $76,440 fee is to be kept for housing over 0.2 acres. A maximum of $15,287 per dwelling unit for low-density housing and properties which include additional development units there was an extra $8,331 per unit for multi-residential housing.