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CITY OF PORT COQUITLAM ww “UL , ; ~

MEMO

B. Kirk Date: July 16th, 1990
City Administrator

Administration Committee

User fees - newly constructed homes

RECOMMENDATION:

That Council approve the amendments proposed by the Deputy
Treasurer-Finance as outlined in the attached memos.

BACKGROUND & COMMENTS:

At the present time a considerable amount of time is spent trying to find out when a
particular house was in fact occupied and billings are generated from this date. Under the
proposed scheme we would charge the builder at time of the building permit application
for water, sewer and garbage collection starting 120 days later.

The main advantages to the proposed system are:

it is simple and will take considerably less time to administer than the
present system, and

it will no longer result in the new property owner receiving two utility
bill‘ngs in a relatively short period of time.

The only disadvantage I can see to the new system is that there may be some instances
where new rates come into effect and the bylaws are not changed more than 120 days in
advance. In these cases we will not have charged the builder sufficient funds, but would

still consider the annual billing to be paid in full.

As far as the effect to the builder goes, he will receive wording from us indicating that he
has in fact prepaid charges relating to the specific property and his lawyer will be able to
recover some of the charges at time of conveyancing.

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