Bonnyville will charge late fees for tardy Business Licences

The Town of Bonnyville made some updates to its Business Licence Bylaw at last week’s regular council meeting. The Town needed to update the bylaw to include cannabis retail locations and in doing so, they decided to update some items; including added late fees for tardy business licence renewals.

“We developed a new development permit and licence for cannabis locations and decided not to charge a different fee then other business licences.” Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Mark Powers explained to Council that there was some discussion on charging a different, higher fee for cannabis retail locations, but ultimately Council decided not to go that route.

When opening up the bylaw to include this new sector, Town Administration decided it was a good opportunity to go through the bylaw to see if there was anything else that needed updating.

On element that staff noted was there was no late fees for businesses that apply for their business licence renewal late. Staff noted that in 2018 there are 621 Business Licences (renewal & new) with 73 licences unpaid as of June 30th, 2018. Staff is following up with the unpaid licences, but want to help discourage this in the future.

Staff proposed the following fee structure:

• $50 for applied for payments received from February 1 up to & including March 30,
• $50 plus double the regular Business Licence Fee for payments made between April 1 up to & including April 30,
• Renewals not received by May 1 of the licencing year will be cancelled and the business will be struck from the business licence registry.

Business licence renewals can be paid January 1 to January 31, of the licencing year, without penalty.

Town Council passed the bylaw and it will be in effect henceforth.