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But councillors won’t sanction any more deals for new land until the next levy regime is in place. Mayor Naheed Nenshi and allies have expressed determination to raise levies because the current ones don’t cover all the pipes, sewage treatment plant expansions and other costs that new growth demands.

“We clearly have a gap that we’re missing, so we’re not going to continue increasing that gap while we’re trying to pursue (a deal) that closes it,” Coun. Evan Woolley said.

The city has already freed up land for tens of thousands of new homeowners with those deals for vacant land in the northeast corner of Calgary, as well as along Centre Street north of Stoney Trail.

“That should suffice to fix any immediate land supply issues that may have been in place, and right now we have to have all hands on deck to fix the system as a whole instead of one-offs,” Nenshi said.

Nenshi has long said Calgary needs to charge developers for the other one-half of new water and sewage infrastructure developers don’t currently pay for through levies, which requires other Calgarians to pay those costs through rate hikes, and add to city debt.

Brad Stevens, a city general manager who will lead Build Calgary, said that’s not the only missing piece of the city’s costs of growth puzzle.

“There’s a lot of fundamentals about how that’s calculated. I’d really have to get into a question with you, levy by levy,” he said.

Guy Huntingford, the head of the city’s developer association which leads levy negotiations for industry, could not be reached for comment after council’s policy announcement on late Friday afternoon. Developers pay double the levy rates they paid before the existing 2011 agreement, and aren’t eye-t0-eye with Nenshi on next steps.