LangleyAdvance Your community newspaper since 1931
Thursday, September 26, 2013 Breaking news, sports, and entertainment: www.langleyadvance.com
Audited circulation: 40,026 – 44 pages
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A driver from Cambridge, Ont., had spectacularly bad luck on Tuesday when his car caught fire just before 4:30 p.m. on busy 200th Street near 86th Avenue. The driver got out safely and no one was injured, but the fire destroyed the car and blocked rush hour traffic for some time in one of the busy southbound lanes. The Langley RCMP came to do traffic control once the fire was extinguished, said Cpl. Holly Marks, spokesperson for the local police. The officers helped the driver get some of his possessions out of the vehicle, which was then towed.
Development
School board okays doubling fees
The Langley School District gives the City and Township a lesson on the costs of school site acquisition. by Heather Colpitts
hcolpitts@langleyadvance.com
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The Langley School Board is hiking the fees it gets from developers to buy land for new schools in growing neighbourhoods. The current fees are $354 per unit for low density housing, $283 for medium density and $212 for high density. The proposed fees are slightly more than double the current rates at $737 (low), $590 (medium), and $443 (high). “I think it’s time we got on with it and adopt it,” said Trustee Alison McVeigh.
Ted Schaffer, the City’s actfor both the City of Langley ing mayor, addressed the school and the Township of Langley, trustees, lobbying for a two-tier in our opinion, is inequitable fee structure with the City paying and unreasonable given that the less than the Township because City’s projected student growth most of the development taking in the next 10 years is minimal,” place is in the Township. Schaffer said. At the request of the municiTrustees questioned whether palities, the district did a study of Schaffer’s suggested two-tier fee expected future development in is possible. the next decade. School Board The consultant, Chair Wendy “I think it’s time we Urban Systems, Johnson said the got on with it and said that less than increased fees nine per cent of put Langley in adopted it.” the future growth the middle of the Alison McVeigh in Langley will pack, in comtake place in the parison to other City, with just over Lower Mainland 91 per cent taking place in the municipalities. Township. Land costs are estimated to be Student number projections for about $1.2 million per acre over the next decade show that about the next five years in this com4.37 per cent of the students munty. would be in the City. The District is asking the “The proposed doubling of the Ministry of Education for a School Site Acquitition Charge new secondary school in the
Willoughy area to take pressure off of R.E. Mountain Secondary. Based on projections, the District will need to spend about $30 million over the next decade to have sufficient student spaces in the fastest growing area of this community. Now that the school board has approved the fees, the issue goes back to the City and Township which have 60 days to give their opinion. If they disagree with the school board, the matter goes to mediation, with the decision binding on all parties. The fee had not changed in a dozen years, and the last time the fee was changed, the issue went to mediation. Once the amount is settled upon, the school district will give final approval to a bylaw with the new fee structure. It would come into effect 60 days after school board approval.