Its efforts to bring on-farm business into legal compliance moving slowly, Woolwich is turning to an outside contractor to speed up the work.

In hiring Stantec Consulting to carry on with the review started in 2020 by township staff, Woolwich also plans to levy fees against noncompliant businesses with the aim of recovering its costs. The company will be paid $107,000 to do the review.

Where staff efforts to visit farms to check for illegal operations have so far covered less than a third of the township, the consultant is expected to finish in a year rather than the five or six years it would take staff to do the work.

“Staff basically started at the north end of the township and are working our way down. It is a slow process – we do about 50 properties at a time – and right now we’ve done about a third of the township. It’s probably going to take us another few years to get through the rest of the township,” manager of planning Jeremy Vink told councillors meeting January 23.

In looking to have the noncompliant farm businesses pay for the program, the township is eyeing a $2,000 fee beyond standard rates for, say, a zoning change.

“Let’s say in this case a site-plan application for an on-farm diversified use is $2,500. If we find them and we have to deal with them through an enforcement process, we charge them an extra $2,000 because the costs incurred to go through all this – for staff time, working with them, etc. – is a lot more work,” Vink explained.

The idea was quickly endorsed, with Coun. Eric Schwindt the lone holdout. He called for a hiatus from the program rather than pushing ahead with new costs this year. But others argued in favour of the expedited service.

“For us to have this review completed within a year is appealing, and it can put everybody on a level playing field. Who knows how much it could bring in for the township? Maybe we’re out of pocket at the end of the day, having to pay this consultant and not recovering some of those funds, said Coun. Nathan Cadeau, noting the faster process would be fairer.

“I think there’s a lot of people that have already started paying these fees and if we stop the program now it’s not fair to them. We need to continue. We will probably recover our costs even though we have to hire the consultant, so I think we need to move forward and get this finished,” agreed Coun. Bonnie Bryant.

Vink noted that property owners operating noncompliant farm businesses could avoid the extra fees by coming forward pre-emptively.

Township planning staff began contacting farm operators in 2020, seeking out non-compliant operations and trying to bring them back into conformity with zoning bylaws and the building code.

The township allows farm owners to operate businesses on their properties as long as the ventures are secondary to the agricultural operation and the operation conforms to all the legal obligations of any other business. A number of legal issues have been identified over the years, including zoning issues, with Vink noting the largest issue has been building code compliance: many of the structures housing the businesses have been found noncompliant with the likes of electrical, safety and fire-suppression issues. Correcting the deficiencies can cost tens of thousands of dollars.