The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) Board of Directors is proceeding with a wide range of 2021 user- and frontage fees for 15 small wastewater treatment plants operating in rural neighbourhoods from Langdale to Pender Harbour.
Prior to setting what in some cases were formidable rate increases at a special board meeting on Dec. 3, some directors noted that, after hearing complaints from residents, there had to be improvements in public communications about the waste facilities.
Two sets of annual fees are levied on residents hooked up to the systems – user fees, which cover operating and maintenance, and frontage fees which contribute to reserve funds set aside for capital improvements.
On advice from district staff, the board increased user fees anywhere from four per cent (to $975) for the Canoe Road plant in Madeira Park, to 36 percent (to $1,304) in the Sakinaw Ridge community. The average user-fee increase was about 15 per cent.
Frontage fees are considerably lower in total dollar amounts than user fees, but the frontage increases for 2021 were in most cases much higher than in previous years, as regional district staff and area directors grapple with the prospect of upgrading or even replacing the aging facilities over the next 50 years.
Frontage fees for Woodcreek Park in Elphinstone, for instance, which has 73 properties on its system, went up nearly 200 per cent, from $102 to $302 a year. Owners of the eight properties on the system in Sakinaw Ridge, already hit hard on user fees, saw a 26 per cent increase in their annual frontage fees (to $845 in 2021). Frontage fees for Lily Lake ($204 a year in 2020) and Lee Bay ($102 in 2020) in Area A, however, did not increase at all for 2021. There also were no frontage-fee increases applied to Square Bay in Halfmoon Bay.
Elphinstone director Donna McMahon told the meeting she had recently met with Woodcreek Park residents about their local treatment plant and heard concerns about an ongoing lack of information about the facility and the fees associated with it. “They need the background, they need to understand what they’re being charged, where it goes, what the reserves are,” McMahon said. “I believe that [explanatory] statements have gone out in the past, but nobody could turn one up from any anytime since 2014.”
Echoing McMahon’s comments was Area B director Lori Pratt, who said she’d also heard from Halfmoon Bay residents about a lack of communication regarding plant operations and fees. “There used to be an in-person meeting [with regional district staff] to discuss what was coming up over the next year, and the staff were available to answer questions.”
Area A director Leonard Lee noted that his own Pender Harbour residence is on a local sewage system. “I’ve owned this property for 20 years or so and I used to get [annual] statements. And it was a little alarming when they stopped [in 2014].”
Remko Rosenboom, SCRD general manager of infrastructure services, said he did not know why the explanatory statements that came with fee bills stopped in 2014 (before Rosenboom was employed by the regional district). He suggested that detailed information on the treatment plants’ operational and financial status could in future be put on the SCRD’s website.
Square Bay resident Peter Galbraith told the board during public comments that the issue in his neighbourhood is not the SCRD’s communication with residents, it’s the way financing of the treatment plants has been structured. “The problem here is not one of inadequate understanding,” Galbraith said. “We disagree with some of the principles that are being used in developing the numbers that are in there.”
McMahon noted in reply that the fee increases under discussion were for next year only. “The question of how much is enough to put in the capital reserve is a conversation we haven’t had yet,” said McMahon. “That’s going to be another conversation that we’re going to have to have in 2021.”
The fee-change bylaws were on the agenda to be adopted at the Dec. 10 board of directors meeting. Staff said the fees will be posted on the SCRD website soon.
