County passes master schedule of fees
By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Wheatland County unanimously passed its Master Schedule of Fees bylaw for the fiscal year during the April 7 meeting, where all three readings were conducted.
The updated bylaw contains several adjustments for clarity and compliance purposes, including rewording for fees relating to road sign installations, and penalties applied to water services.
“The largest section of changes is an addition to a new section for the Goldfinch region, the new raw water line,” said Joel Chiasson, interim general manager of community and development services. “The purposes of this area are just to ensure that there is a proper structure in place to collect revenues for those once it is operational. The operating costs are intended to be fully recovered by the users and they are based on their proportional share or use of the system.”
Chiasson explained the intent is to be with adjustments to the annual rates, which would consider the actual numbers recorded from the previous year.
Two other items annotated in the Master Schedule of Fees bylaw are new capital levy charges – being the capital replacement reserve, and the connection fee intended for new companies and residents tying into the existing system who did not contribute to the original costs.
“In this way, it is calculating the cost of that infrastructure, and they are paying for their buy in of their share to tie into that,” said Chiasson.
Fees around the water line are structured around the capacity of the system, currently being approximately 53 litres per second of maximum flow.
Coun. Keith Clayton, prior to the passing of the bylaw, sought clarification regarding the posted $273,668 per litre per second connection fee lump sum payment for new accounts.
“If we have a user come on or a new account holder who wants to use 25 per cent of the capacity of that system, then they would have the levy of 25 per cent of the original capital cost of to build that that system,” said Brad Bullock, general manager of transportation and agriculture. “As the system is built up further, that number will change and so we will monitor that but essentially it is a levy depending on their planned use of the system and how much they reserve for their use.”
Addressing a concern expressed by Coun. Berle Hebbes, though council did seek provincial support to address water concerns in the summer of 2025, there are currently no active applications for grant funding, nor is there a grant program available to receive aid for water reservoir-related projects.
“We have used cost estimates of a future reservoir to establish that levy. Fundamentally, what that water line is, is future water resiliency projects. There are provincial grant funds available for that, which the county does pursue,” explained Bullock. “When it does come (time) to build that project, if there is grant funding provided to the county for that, then we would adjust those rates. Right now, these rates are all based on our best estimate for the information that we have right now.”
Currently, the County relies on water licenses purchased directly from the province to divert from the Bow River, which are accompanied by conditions.
The future construction of a reservoir will allow for the collection and storage of water during times of high water levels and may be used to increase local water resiliency into the future.
The Goldfinch water line, which served as a significant point of discussion prior to the passing of the bylaw, supports a local industrial park among its local users which includes the CGC wallboard manufacturing plant currently under construction.