Huron County council is not looking to establish development charges (DCs), voting against staff doing more research on the topic.
The charges are a tool that some municipalities are adopting to assist in financing projects needed for services resulting from growth and new development.
At Wednesday's meeting, Director of Planning and Development Sandra Weber presented a report to council on DCs, noting that a lot more work would need to be done before a bylaw on the matter could be passed.
While several local municipalities have adopted Development Charge By-laws, including Goderich, South Huron, Bluewater, and North Huron, there was no appetite to have them at the county level.
Goderich Mayor Trevor Bazinet said the charges had resulted in many requests to town council.
"The Town of Goderich does have development charges and one thing that I've been noticing in the last couple years is every developer comes and asks for an exemption as well," said Bazinet. "So that puts your council at a risk of setting up a precedent; if you waive exemptions for one, you might as well consider it for everyone. So I would hate to see that for county council to get involved with that as well."
He suggested a strict policy for exemptions if the charges moved forward.
Huron East Mayor Bernie MacLellan said he spoke with Bruce County staff about their development charges and heard that it helped answer a question that this council had been asking.
"How do we get developers to build the types of houses we want? That's exactly what (Bruce County) are doing with their development costs. They're giving the exemptions with an intent, so they're getting developers to build those starter homes or those less expensive homes to get them into affordable ranges where younger couples can buy them and move in. So they are using them as a tool to get what they want, which we don't have a tool like that right now."
MacLellan said he wasn't sure he supported DCs but did want staff to dig up more on the topic. However, that motion was defeated.
Central Huron Mayor Jim Ginn said he saw the charges as a roadblock to development.
"I don't really want, frankly, the County to pile on extra costs for development in Central Huron," he said. "We want to keep our costs as low as possible and I see this as being a negative approach. I think it was a good report, but I don't need any more information, I don't want to proceed with it."
For the area, Bruce Grey and Wellington Counties have established County-level development charges while Huron and Perth currently don't have any.