A Hail Mary from the development community this week led to Collingwood council pressing pause on approving a new process for closing dormant development files.
Earlier this month during a committee of the whole meeting on June 5, the town’s planning staff first pitched a new process for closing developer application files that have been inactive for four months as a way for the town to mitigate risk over new provincial planning rules that require the town to refund application fees for applications that take too long.
This week during their council meeting to ratify the changes, a last-minute addition to the deputation list was Brittany Robertson, president of the Georgian Triangle Development Institute, who attended to express concern.
“This is extremely problematic for the development community,” said Robertson.
“Our board has received a flurry of comments and concerns from our membership in the last week asking us to do something about this,” she said. “We are feeling quite blindsided without a real opportunity to work with the town to come up with something more reasonable.”
While Robertson was not listed as a deputant on the agenda, Mayor Yvonne Hamlin put forward a motion at the beginning of the meeting to allow her to speak, which was passed by a vote of 7-1 with Coun. Chris Potts opposed.
Robertson said developers and applicants invest a significant amount of time and money into applications, and it is common for requested substantial changes to take more than four months to work through.
“The suggestion of closing an application in four months adds even more risk for the developers to doing business and investing in Collingwood,” said Robertson.
Currently, the town has no formal process to close files that have been dormant, nor does it have a definition for what constitutes a dormant file, said the town’s director of planning, Summer Valentine, in an email to CollingwoodToday.
Based on the staff proposal that was presented to council’s committee of the whole on June 5, a dormant file would be defined as one with four consecutive months of inactivity on the applicant’s end. Staff would also send a warning to the applicant after three months of inactivity warning them of the closure policy and their application status. A file would not be considered inactive if an applicant was waiting on information or comments from the town.
Being able to close dormant files and require reapplication from the developer also helps make sure applications are reviewed against current planning policies and standards. A development application that takes a long time may also come with reviews that are no longer appropriate based on the community values and priorities, as well as municipal planning bylaws, of the day.
According to Ontario legislation that takes effect Jul 1, 2023, municipalities have 60 days to make a decision on a plan of subdivision application, 90 days for a zoning bylaw amendment, and 120 days for an official plan amendment. After those deadlines, the applicant is eligible for a refund of the application fees ranging from 50 to 100 per cent depending on how many days pass without a decision.
According to the staff report on the matter, in situations of land speculation a landowner may make an application to the town far in advance of any intended building project for speculative purposes such as increasing the value of the land, or to lock in development charges, or to get an application in before legislation or municipal official plan changes.
“This proposal is completely unreasonable and will be seen as a direct shot from the town directly at the development industry,” said Robertson, suggesting a one-year timeline would be more reasonable.
There are currently between five and 10 planning application files before the town that would be considered dormant under the proposed system.
When it came time to vote on the proposed new process, Hamlin put forward a motion to refer the matter back to staff with direction to have them consult the development community.
Coun. Kathy Jeffery asked for clarification on what kind of feedback the referral would garner.
“In my mind, our staff have very clearly vetted a process that's used in other communities, so I'm assuming that these discussions are going to really explain our position in terms of the speed at which the province is requiring us to move now and the importance of our partners staying engaged,” she said.
“I'm hoping the conversation is going to be a two-way one,” said Jeffery.
Hamlin said any conversations would be two-way discussions.
“I never anticipate our development community is going to be telling us, as the people voted to lead our community, what we have to do,” she said.
Council voted unanimously in favour of referring the item back to staff. Coun. Deb Doherty and Coun. Christopher Baines were absent.
With files from Erika Engel.
