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And they’re off School District 28 junior boys take off during the cross country run at Red Bluff. For more photos see Friday’s Observer.
Autumn MacDonald photo
Council looks at multi-family housing bylaw ryAN GrAhAM Observer Reporter Council has charged staff with the task of coming up with a multi-family housing bylaw. The bylaw would include both development cost charge waivers and tax exemptions. The program would assist the development of multifamily housing in the community and would recommend exempting taxes on qualifying projects for 10 years in north Quesnel and five years in sections of the West
Riverside and Riverview neighbourhoods. The incentive package also recommended waiving development cost charges 100 per cent for affordable units and 25 – 50 per cent for units meeting low environmental impact criteria. “What’s the logic between having a 10 year exemption in one area and a five year in another area?” Coun. Scott Elliot said asked Director of Development Services Tanya Turner. “On the surface it might
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seem unfair to not have 10 in both but maybe you can help me with the justification or reasoning.” Turner responded by saying that the decision to go 10 years in north Quesnel and five years in west Quesnel came down to a couple of reasons. “The downtown is definitely the area we are hearing the biggest issues of having a lack of multi-family housing even though there are some units, there is rarely any vacancy,” Turner said. “These units are usually booked up and it’s a issue
in terms of supply in that area. We’re putting a higher value on that to provide a stronger encouragement to have more in that area. Demand is strongest in this area and land availability for new developments is not. There is less available lands or opportunities to put some market values in north Quesnel to obtain lands.” Coun. Shushil Thapar, who voted against the multi-family housing proposal wanted to know why they were targeting only two areas and not
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the whole city? Turner responded by saying the infrastructure in those areas is the strongest. “We would target these incentives to anywhere that we have encouraged multi-family development in the community over long term policies and as well as infrastructure,” Turner said. “The infrastructure that’s in place to support these developments is of course much stronger in north Quesnel for sure, as well as in West Quesnel where we have the additional infrastructure and still
have the proximity to the downtown, which makes it good from a densification perspective.” She added the studies show they are in need of multi-family housing. “What our housing studies have shown us is that we have ample supply of single family development and we are lacking in the multi-family development,” Turner said. A bylaw will now be brought back to council for review which would then be followed up with a public consultation.
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