

Chris Fox, CP24.com





City staff are promising to revisit a proposal to dramatically increase the permit fees for patios and sidewalk cafes after Mayor Tory deemed it an “attack on fun” the doesn’t “pass the smell test.”

Staff with the municipal licensing and standards division held a meeting with permit holders on Monday, where they presented a draft of what the new fees could look like.

In the downtown core, the draft called for the annual fee for operating a patio that serves alcohol to rise from $78.71 per square metre to $296.01 per square metre. The fee for operating a patio that doesn’t serve alcohol, meanwhile, would increase from $78.71 to $272.33 per square metre.

The draft also proposed similar, and in some cases larger increases, in other parts of the city.

“I woke up this morning and heard about this on the radio and thought I was having a nightmare. It was the first I had heard of it and I can just tell you that they are consulting and they are getting a lot of negative feedback and I agree with it,” Tory told reporters on Thursday. “I am not going to be the leader who attacks fun in this city; I can assure you of that. Patios are a hugely important part of my life. I sit outside as soon as I possibly can in April or March if that’s possible. I think it is an important part of keeping neighbourhoods lively.”

The proposed increases for patio permit fees range from about 350 per cent to more than 1,500 per cent, meaning business owners could be on the hooks for thousands of dollars in additional fees.

The proposal also calls for a single permit application fee of $1,332.45.

Previously business owners paid between $239 and $747.91 for the permit application depending on where in the city they are located.

The breakdown for permit increases by area of the city is as follows:

The permit fee in downtown Toronto would go from $78.71 per square metre to $296.01 per square metre ($272.33 if not serving alcohol)

The permit fee in midtown Toronto would go from $39.34 per square metre to $289.33 per square metre. ($266.19 if not serving alcohol)

The permit fee in North York would go from $19.69 per square metre to $201.82 per square metre.($185.68 if not serving alcohol)

The permit fee in the east end (everything east of the DVP) would go from $21.42 per square metre to $161.78 per square metre. ($148.86 if not serving alcohol)

The permit fee in the west end (everything west of Parkdale) would rise to $172.33 ($158.55 if not serving alcohol). Previously the west end was split into several regions. In Etobicoke the fee was $11 per square metre.

Fees haven’t risen since the 90s

The proposed fee increases have not actually been brought before the licensing and standards committee yet and remain a work in progress.

Speaking with CP24 Thursday, the city’s director of policy and strategic support Carleton Grant said that staff tried to come up with a “fair” price in revising fees that hadn’t increased since the 1990s but clearly went too high.

“Our colleagues in another division who are experts in land value put together land values in different parts of the city and then we took that and discounted it because we know there is a community benefit to patios. What we have learned from this feedback, though, is that we went too high,” he said. “We took it (the land value) at about 55 per cent of the market rate and now we think we have to make it lower.”

Tory told reporters that the fee increases as proposed are “excessive” and Grant, whose department was tasked with putting together the proposal, concurred.

He said that the intent was never to “gouge people” but conceded that more thought needs to be given to supporting restaurants with patios, many of which are small businesses that wouldn’t be able to withstand a steep increase.

“We want active streets, we want vibrant streets. We don’t want to create new revenues at the expense of not promoting a patio culture,” Grant said.

It should be noted that small patios with a maximum depth of 80 centimetres and a maximum width of 5.5 metres would not have to pay for permits under the proposal.

City staff are expected to bring a revised proposal to the municipal licensing and standards committee in April.

“For these patios we are using a public asset so in that sense I think it’s fair that there should be some compensation for that and it has to be updated more than every 30 years but having said that we aren’t going to attack fun, we aren’t going to attack patios and we aren’t going to make these businesses less than variable,” Tory said.