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Pre-Consultation Defines Criteria for Development Applications Oakville Model Streamlines Administration
January, 2008
By Barbara Carss
Municipalities throughout Ontario are establishing new policies for the development approvals process. Planning Act amendments that came into effect in 2007 prescribe information that development proponents must submit to meet provincial requirements. The new legislation also allows municipalities to mandate pre-consultation before applications are submitted, and gives municipalities the ability to stipulate studies that developers will be required to prepare along with their development applications.
In order to take advantage of these new options, municipalities must amend their Official Plans to state the requirement for pre-consultation and define what a complete development application will entail. Although there has been some concern among developers that such requirements could potentially create delays, add costs and/or be manipulated by opponents trying to stall project approvals, industry advocates commend the approach taken by some of the earliest adopters, including Oakville, Markham and Mississauga.
"They are really codifying processes that they have had in place anyway," says Paula Tenuta, Director of Municipal Government Relations for GTA-based Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD). "If pre-consultation happens properly in the beginning that should avert extra costs because developers will know what is required upfront."
This replaces the previous more ad hoc approach where proponents would submit applications and then sometimes be asked to conduct additional studies and/or confer with other agencies such as the upper tier municipality, conservation authorities and school boards. Notably, the Town of Oakville has introduced a coordinated forum that brings representatives from all the municipal departments and outside agencies that typically comment on development applications together in a regularly scheduled time slot twice a month. Participants receive an agenda with PDFs of all pending proposals in the week prior to the pre-consultation meeting.
"We've developed a formal pre-consultation package to deal with Official Plan amendments and zoning by-law amendments that makes it a little more user friendly," explains Barbara Koopmans, Manager of Current Planning and Urban Design for the Town of Oakville. "We look at plans, provide preliminary feedback and enter into a pre-consultation agreement. It basically just really clearly sets out the rules. We identify what the specific requirements are for the proposal - what's required at submission and what may be required in the process."
Although municipalities are typically proposing to designate a rather extensive list of studies necessary for a complete development application, that's simply meant to outline the whole range of studies that a municipality might potentially need. For example, a draft policy introduced at the City of Toronto's January 2008 Planning and Growth Management Committee meeting identifies all the possible studies that could be required for six different types of development applications: Official Plan amendments; zoning by-law amendments; plans of subdivision; condominiums; consents to sever; and site plans. However, it states that the actual required information will be determined at the pre-consultation stage.
Critics of the legislation have suggested that opponents of proposed projects might attempt to use the broad-ranging lists of required studies to try to compel development proponents to undertake unnecessary, time-consuming, costly studies. Koopmans maintains that pre-consultation agreements should guard against that kind of intervention.
"Our policy gives the Town discretion to grant exemptions. Quite frankly, if we haven't asked for it, and none of the commenting agencies have asked for it, I don't know that a third party would have a basis to for ask for it," she says.
BILD is monitoring other municipalities' proposed Official Plan policies to try to ensure that similar safeguards are in place. "In some of the instances they [municipalities] do list requirements that they may not have required before," Tenuta says. "We've been careful in watching the wording and we've tried to put a big emphasis on the pre-consultation."
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