Wernerville (Info Session PPT + Video)

Over the last year and a half, our office has received a lot of questions from residents about a parcel of land in the Ellerslie area called Wernerville, specifically municipal servicing in this country estate study area. As we dug into the background of this space and the surrounding zone, we realized that there is a lot of historical and planning context that is quite complex.

To help share this information and provide some level-setting with the residents in this area and the surrounding community, I recently hosted an information session and was joined by the Director and Senior Planner on this file. We also discussed various tools to enable servicing as well as master planning rather than the current piecemeal approach. You can watch the full video of the presentation below and access a PDF copy of the slides HERE.

*Update: May 31st, 2023

During the information session, we received a few questions which we did not get the time to answer. We have included the questions and responses below:

1. What is the process for a community to request a Local Improvement Tax?

Local Improvement Taxes (also known as levies) in Alberta are governed by Sections 391 to 409 of the Municipal Government Act (MGA). Section 392(2) indicates that petitions must be signed by the owner(s) of 2/3 of the properties liable to pay the tax, AND that the owners signing the petition must represent at least 1/2 of the assessment value of the area on which the tax will be imposed. In some cases, the City has required a higher level of support, such as 75% or more.

A Local Improvement Tax can either be initiated by the municipality or by a group of owners. Once a petition is filed and accepted in accordance with the requirements of the MGA, City staff would prepare a Local Improvement Tax Plan and Bylaw. Under Section 397, City Council must approve a Local Improvement Bylaw before it is implemented. 

For more detailed questions about this process, please contact Kathy Chan (kathy.chan2@edmonton.ca) with the Development Engineering & Drawing Review group who manage Local Improvement requests.

2. Can Local Improvement Taxes fund planning work in advance of physical infrastructure costs?

Because the Wernerville Special Study Area does not have an existing land use plan, a significant amount of planning work, technical studies, and community engagement would need to be done in order to understand the scale of infrastructure that would need to be built to support future land uses in the area. This makes rolling planning costs into the Local Improvement very challenging because when City Council approves a Local Improvement Tax Bylaw, the amount of money being borrowed and recovered through the tax needs to be known in advance. Typically the expenditures to be covered by a Local Improvement Tax are determined through cost estimates from detailed design drawings (i.e for underground utilities, landscaping, and transportation infrastructure).

Under Section 395(2), a Local Improvement Tax may include a variety of expenditures to support a local improvement, including physical infrastructure, land, and professional service costs. Therefore, it is potentially feasible for planning and design costs to be rolled into the Local Improvement Tax retroactively, but either a group of landowners or the City would have to pay these costs upfront, and a mechanism would have to be determined for how those upfront costs would be reimbursed. There is no existing mechanism in place for that to be done.

Have additional questions? You can always email our Ward Karhiio office at keren.tang@edmonton.ca.