Yellowknife (Mar 21/03) - Developers will soon have to pay $85 an hour to the GNWT to review future building plans -- something the NWT fire marshal says will cost developers thousands of dollars extra.

A review is mandatory for every structure (except single family dwellings) built and renovated in the NWT. Until now, the review was a free service provided by Municipal and Community Affairs. The fee kicks in April 1.

Debbie DeLancey, deputy minister of MACA, said the department has been reviewing its various fee structures for services since 1999 and decided this was an area where they needed to start charging for service.

"We should be consistent," DeLancey explained.

The fire marshal is required by law to review building plans to ensure they comply with national building codes.

"The process won't change," she said.

But the GNWT's intake of cash will. MACA expects to bring in $20,000 a year from the new fee.

"Most projects," said Delancey, "will only require a maximum of one or two hours of review." she said.

"Unless you're talking about a multi-million dollar project.

"And even then it's never going to be more than a couple of thousand dollars."

According to the fire marshal, the fee will net much more than the department claims.

Fire Marshal Don Gillis said the more complicated a building's design the more time it takes to ensure compliance. Gillis could not say what kind of project has been more common for his staff in recent years.

But big mining developments north of Yellowknife were "hundreds of pages long," Gillis recalled. "That would take hundreds of hours."

For example, 200 hours of work on one big project for example would cost $17,000.

DeLancey said that building inspections are "a reasonable area for the public to pay a user fee because we are providing a service," she said, adding, "this is not a big cash cow."

John Droog isn't worried about the fee. Droog is a project manager NWT construction firm PCL.

He said while he didn't "understand the reasoning" behind MACA's decision to start charging a fee now.

"For the amount of time it would take, and for the information that it provides the owner, I really don't have a problem with it."