Councilor raises concerns about fees charged for lottery, raffle licenses

Norfolk councilors have asked county staff to investigate the fee structure for licensing lotteries and other community fundraising events.

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Staff will come back to council with a report after the issue of licensing fees was raised by Coun. Adam Veri at a meeting on Tuesday.

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Council approved a bylaw at the meeting setting out updated user fees and service charges for everything from planning a subdivision to renting a county pool.

Veri said he is concerned about community groups being charged three per cent of the total value of prizes for raffles, bingos and Nevada lotteries, as set out in the bylaw.

So, if a group is organizing a $1,000 raffle, the fee is $30. If they are organizing a $100,000 raffle, the fee is $3,000.

“Why are we in their pockets for varying degrees of fundraising,” said Veri. “I’d rather see a flat fee on fundraising. It shouldn’t be a fluctuating scale. If a community group has lots of volunteers and can do really well and sell $100,000 worth of tickets, it shouldn’t cost them more when all that money is going back into the community anyway.”

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Veri said community groups can sometimes complete projects more efficiently and effectively than the municipality.

“These are things the county may be asked to do if not for these groups doing them.”

County staff said the fee structure is built on what’s been charged in Norfolk for a number of years.

Coun. Linda Vandendriessche didn’t get support for her motion to reconsider all the planning user fees set out in the bylaw. Her intention, she said, was to discuss the potential for varying planning fees depending on the size of the project someone is applying for.

“Sometimes there is a huge discrepancy in size but the same application fee,” said Vandendriessche.

Brandon Sloan general manager of planning and development, said staff completed a comprehensive user fee review, which was considered and approved by council in April.

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A report presented to council at that time said the Ontario government’s introduction of the More Homes for Everyone Act made significant changes to the Planning Act, including the requirement of refunds to be paid for certain planning user fees based on the length of time taken to process the application/amendment.

At the time, it was calculated that the cost of processing applications in Norfolk, including staff time, materials, etc. was falling significantly short of what was being charged to applicants. It was determined taxpayers were subsidizing the process, paying about “54 cents of every dollar for the cost of every dollar of administering the applications/amendments that directly benefit developers.”

In addition to raising planning fees, Sloan said staff have been added in several departments to speed up the planning application process. He said the time to process applications for rezoning and site plans have been significantly reduced.

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