A resident comments on the planning process.
This is directed to those on Council who are interested in improving Council responsiveness to the concerns of citizens during the approval process for planning proposals.
I have reviewed the proceedings of Guelph City Council on March 5 2012 at which the development at 180 Gordon Street was approved. At this meeting Council received a request for deferral from the Old University Neighbourhood Association, an incoporated body that represents all the residents in the large area between the Speed River and College from the Cutten Club on the East to Edinburgh on the west, including the enclave of Lynwood Drive, Maplewood, Lockyer and Oriole. There was also a separate request for deferral from a more restricted group, the 29 residents who formed the Brooklyn River Corridor Residents Association, presented by their lawyer Ian Flett. I also spoke and asked for a deferral.
In response to this breadth of support for this request, which came from groups and individuals who had been engaged in the planning process for this property from the first public meeting and who had been clear from the start of the process what issues needed resolution, it would seem to me to be incumbent on City Council to test the intentions of City Council by the placing of a motion to defer. This would provide an opportunity for Councillors to clearly state their understanding of the request to defer and the reasons for voting to grant or not grant the request. The mayor did not request such a motion and no councillor put this motion to allow the requested discussion.
Incomplete and inaccurate information was presented to City Council by staff and by Councillor Wettstein as to the past practices of City Council on planning proposals presented to council which had generated widespread opposition in the neighbourhood and more widely in the city.
The clear precedent for the approach to be used for 180 Gordon Street is recorded in the City Council minutes for August 28 2006 (see attached) as Council dealt with the proposal for 66, 70 AND 72 YORK ROAD, 1 RICHARDSON STREET: Proposed Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment (OP0601/ ZC0518). As you will see this was a Decision Meeting for the proposal. A number of delegates, expressing themselves as individuals and not as an official or unofficial neighbourhood group, expressed concerns about the proposal in the form it was presented for approval. This expression of concern came at the end of an extensive planning process, the same situation as applied to the 180 Gordon Street application on March 5 2012.
None of the delegations specifically asked for a deferral. Despite this, and after the motion to approve the application had been moved and seconded, the following occurred.
3. Moved by Councillor Downer Seconded by Councillor Moziar
THAT the application by Black, Shoemaker, Robinson and Donaldson on behalf of Terra View Homes for a proposed Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment for 66, 70 and 72 York Road and 1 Richardson Street be referred back to staff to engage a mediator and report back at the October 10th, 2006 Guelph City Council meeting.
The motion to defer took precedence. A recorded vote was requested, which resulted as follows:
VOTING IN FAVOUR: Councillors Baily, Billings, Downer, Furfaro, Hamtak, Moziar and Mayor Quarrie (7)
VOTING AGAINST: Councillor Schnurr (1)
The motion was carried.
Councillor Wettstein and Mayor Farbridge can be excused for not knowing about this precedent as they were not on Council at the time. Councillors Burcher, Kovach and Laidlaw, although absent for this meeting, would be familiar with the process by reading the minutes and by the discussion that took place on October 10 2006 when the planning application was approved. At this meeting the City Planner reported
A presentation was made by Melissa Castellan, Senior Development Planner. This application was originally before Council on August 28, 2006 where it was referred back to staff to engage a mediator to resolve the concerns of area residents.
She advised that the mediation sessions were successful and that the revised application before Council includes changes agreed upon by local residents. Changes in the design of the townhouse complex, the method of waste collection and the inclusion of a larger drainage pipe have all been included in the application and staff recommends approval of the application.
Three community delegates and the developer, Andrew Lambden, addressed Council. All three citizen delegates expressed their satisfaction with the results of the mediated discussions and congratulated City Council and City Staff on initiating and carrying out the process. One delegate, Brian Lauder, requested that Council use this approach in the future.
Andrew Lambden also said that he was pleased with the results of the mediation sessions and thanked the community members for their cooperation.
It is very important to notice that Council decided that a mediated process was to be undertaken without any consultation with the developer, and without any assurance that the developer would participate. The clear message to the developer was that Council, the approval body for the application, wanted a negotiated settlement. The implication was that failure to participate in the mediation process would be considered if the application was returned to Council without mediation.
The success of this mediation process, and the clear direction of Council to staff to undertake mediated settlement in planning applications that generated substantial community opposition, was taken into account when City Staff began processing the application for another contentious infill project at 146 Downey Road. It was clear to staff from the responses received from the community early in the planning process for this application that the proposal was contentious.
As a result of the established precedent for mediated discussion the staff planning report for the 146 Downey application prepared for the first Public Meeting, and presented before any delegates were heard at the meeting, already contained a commitment by staff to conduct facilitated mediation to resolve issues presented by the application. As expected by staff there were many delegations, all but one of them raising community objections to the form of development proposed.
It is clear in this case also that the staff commitment to mediated discussion was not based on pre-determination of the willingness of the developer to participate. City Council once again sent a clear message to the developer of the need to participate in the mediation in the subsequent motion:
2. Moved by Councillor Kovach Seconded by Councillor Wettstein
That Council strongly encourage the applicant to work with representatives from the neighbourhood on the proposed application.
The motion passed 13 -0 with VOTING IN FAVOUR: Councillors Beard, Bell, Billings, Burcher, Farrelly, Findlay, Hofland, Kovach, Laidlaw, Piper, Salisbury, Wettstein and Mayor Farbridge .
Once again the mediated discussion process for 146 Downey was successful in resolving all of the neighbourhood issues and an agreed solution was presented to Council and approved.
In neither of these applications were the citizens who spoke organized into residents associations and in neither case did they request mediation. In both cases Council imposed a mediated negotiation without considering whether the developer was willing to participate. In the first case this was done at the end of the process, in the second the process was so well understood that staff recommended it at the start of the process.
I cannot understand how staff came to their decision not to recommend mediated negotiations as the required process for 180 Gordon Street. The issues presented were identical to those of 146 Downey, the uniformity of opposition to the first proposed form of development was the same, and given the success of the two previous mediated settlements, and the expressed approval of Council for mediated negotiations for contested planning approvals, it was the obvious direction to take.
I have even more difficulty understanding why Council abandoned its commitment to mediated negotiations in contested planning approvals. In the case of 180 Gordon there was an explicit request for mediation, a reasonable request given the Council policy that had been previously adopted. Moreover this request came from two organized groups, one the well-established OUNRA representing a large block of residents, and the other a more geographically-focused group of immediately adjacent neighbours. Rejection of the request for mediation is a clear statement by Council that the views of residents, uniformly expressed in opposition to the form of development presented, have no weight in the decision-making process.
Implicit in this decision is the attitude that consideration of citizen views on planning is the responsibility of staff and not of Council. Council supports the requirement that staff record and respond to citizen input on planning but once this is done Council has little interest in citizen views that run counter to the advice given to Council by staff .
The effect of this is to transfer the responsibility for approval of Planning Proposals from Council to staff, rendering Council approval a foregone conclusion once staff had recommended approval.A final contributing factor to the unfortunate decision to abandon mediated negotiation in contested planning applications was the innaccurate information provided to Council on possible appeal to the OMB by the developer on the grounds of a delayed approval. The Director of Planning was correct in saying that the developer could appeal the zoning by-law that was before council to the OMB at any time since the 180 d period for decision had been exceeded. However City Staff had already ruled that the zoning by-law was not approvable without an OP amendment. There was no opportunity for an appeal of the zoning by-law alone and so the 180 d period for appeal depended entirely on the OP amendment and thus there was ample time to conduct mediated negotiations and bring the proposal back to Council before the 180 d period expired.
The March 5 decision to dismiss citizen views as irrelevant marks a low point in Council’s decision-making on planning matters. HW