Another contentious go round hammered another nail into the residential rental business licence fee coffin.
Following a lengthy public hearing where council heard from passionate residents both for and against the $155 charge the group voted 5-4 to pass third reading of the bylaw taking back the fee for rental properties with three or fewer units.
Councillors Frank Everitt, Garth Frizzell, Brian Skakun, Murry Krause and Lyn Hall stood as steadfastly in their opinion that the fee should be rescinded as Mayor Shari Green and councillors Cameron Stolz, Albert Koehler and Dave Wilbur held to the idea they should keep it as a tool towards safer housing.
"If you can't use the tool because of resources, what's the benefit of the tool," said Hall.
But Green said she rejected the the suggest that city staff were incapable of managing the potential workload that would have come along with licencing and enforcing residential rental properties.
"I think we got it right last July," said Green, referring to when the idea for instituting the fee was first unanimously approved as part of the core services review implementation plan.
But staff aren't even getting around to currently licenced operations, let alone the new ones that would come online, said Krause.
There must be a middle ground, said Koehler. "Going completely back to where we were is not a good idea either," he said.
While he agreed something needed to be done about problem landlords, Skakun said the licence and accompanying fee wouldn't do the trick and would only serve to be a financially punitive measure.
"It's not about protecting the landlords, it's about protecting the tenants," he said.
The change will revert the business licence bylaw back to affecting properties with three units or more.
Refund cheques worth more than $180,000 for the the 1,187 property owners who paid for a licence will be handed out once the bylaw receives fourth and final reading.
