Planning Abominations

After last night, you just can feel that By-law Enforcement will be very active in certain areas in the City in the future. Lord help a landlord if there is any garbage in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is understood that most of the Councillors and the neighbours opposed the building of a double duplex on a lot that previously had a single-story ranch home on it. No, the above is not a photo of what is being proposed to be built although if you listened to the debate, it sure sounded like it!

The purpose of the new construction as was admitted at Council and never hidden during the entire process that the developer went through was to provide housing for 16 students. One of the Councillors said that as many as 32 students could live in the premises but I’m not sure how that number was reached. To add insult to injury as far as certain people were concerned, if this building was an apartment building then it would need 20 parking spaces. As a double duplex, it only needed four.

Moreover, it was said that the University residences had 200 vacancies and in the area there were 60 to 70 vacancies as well so there was hardly a need it would seem for such a new building. In fact one of the Councillors suggested that the developer might want to reconsider what he was proposing to do because of the economy. And who says that our Council does not look after private enterprise entrepreneurs.

In the world of certain Windsor Councillors, the fact that a building has 17 windows is enough to demand that it not be built.

There was one little problem. The developer complied with the law. The development met the Planning Act, the Official Plan and the zoning. It met the law, all legal requirements.

Apparently, Councillors who have been on the Council for a number of years and even the newbies had difficulty understanding that they were only supposed to be dealing at Council with Site Plan Approval not anything else. In fact, they did not seem to know what Site Plan approval meant. The Developer had appealled to the Ontario Municipal Board and won. What they were to do at Council was extremely limited but apparently that did not matter.

I will say that the Mayor was fair in this debate and tried to keep the Councillors on track but had great difficulty doing so.

What was interesting as well is that Administration recommended that the development move forward because it had met all of the legal requirements. That was not good enough for certain Councillors. They grilled Administration trying to find a weakness so that they could stop the project but were unsuccessful in doing so. They even discussed, if you can believe it, imposing an interim control by law on one single property. That was a desperate measure that some on Council were looking at.

The ludicrous position would be, if Council did not approve the project going forward, that the City would have to hire outside planners, the City Planning department would be subpoenaed by the developer and they would have to support him in any appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board. In fact, most of the Councillors recognized that the City would probably lose but they did not care.

Comments were made such as the following:

•  Something is really rotten with the bylaws
  
•  There is something wrong with the process
  
•  Council can control a 40 W bulb but not 17 windows for privacy concerns
  
•  Should Council feel it is an abomination what options are there available to stop it
  
•  Interestingly, there was recognition that an interim control bylaw is a very heavy-handed tool and a compelling reason is needed to impose one
  
•  The development should be opposed simply because it is wrong
  
•  Its may meet the letter of the law but that does not mean it is not wrong
  
•  What kind of precedent is set, what hope does this give any neighbourhood that they can be protected
  
•  The applicant can use every legal avenue to help him and so Council can look at every legal avenue to stop the development because it is simply wrong
  
•  One should not blame Administration because that is what the rules are
  
•  This is a student “warehouse” with people not committed to the neighbourhood but the Councillor was NOT badmouthing students
  
•  We must do whatever we can to maintain the neighbourhood
  
•  It is mind-boggling what is going on
  
•  There is little chance to win but we have to fight with every tool we have
  
•  Our hands are pretty well tied but I won’t support this going forward
  
•  I expect it to go to the Ontario Municipal Board and expect to lose but we are providing a bit of hope so that residents will know that Council is behind them and will try to stop such projects such as these.

The issue really is that the Planning Act and the City rules need amendment so that this kind of development cannot happen. But the law now does not prohibit it.

Without getting particularly philosophical about it, our Society is supposed to run according to law not according to the whim of some Councillor who just doesn’t happen to like something for whatever reason that he/ she thinks is correct.

Why is our Council forcing a law-abiding citizen to have to hire a lawyer, to file an appeal, to waste money and to have his development increase in cost to fight a legal battle that is clear that Council will lose? Is that really how our City should operate? Why do we even have laws then if Council for whatever reason, good or bad, can ignore them? Is it Council's function to punish people who won't knuckle under to their desires? Would this be a proper use of taxpayer money to appeal? If the City lost the appeal, should we demand that the Councillors re-imburse the City for wasting our money on what they have been told cannot be won? Would the developer have a bad faith claim against the City?

What went on last night was a travesty. On the first vote to approve the Site Plan, it was defeated. On the second vote, to deny Site Plan approval, it was denied as well when the Mayor voted to make the vote a 5-5 tie. That meant that the Motion was defeated.

Accordingly, and only it seems in Windsor, the Site Plan was not approved nor denied. According to the applicant’s lawyer and to Administration as well, the Ontario Municipal Board was probably wrong in sending it to Council in the first place. That presumably means that the applicant did not have to go to Council.

In fact that was stated but that the applicant went there to try to resolve issues not to create new ones for himself. I assume that the applicant is probably free to do whatever it is that he wants to do now but that is something that he must discuss with his own lawyer.

It is not an issue that just arose. That is the annoying part of all this. This issue about student housing, landlords, land development, rooming houses etc. has been around for years and no one has done mcuh about it. The developer is doing what he is legally entitled to do and his legal rights are being trampled by a Council who just does not like what he is doing.

If you go back to what I had written before about Town and Gown, you will note that I am very suspicious about what is taking place. There is something more going on behind the scenes than we know.

In fact, it was very interesting on the land use planning issue on the previous agenda item, the residents of the area in which this development is to be built immediately asked for the imposition of an interim control bylaw to freeze everything. There was nothing on the Agenda Item that even suggested doing so. In fact, the Mayor asked one of the delegations, a former Councillor, how this concept was developed.

The only reason it was not passed last night was supposedly because an interim control bylaw would impact negatively on the University’s new engineering complex.

Accordingly, it is no longer necessary to comply with the law in Windsor for new development. One must ensure as well, that it is not an abomination or student warehousing. If it is, then watch out. the Councilors are gonna getcha!

I expect that a number of people videotaped the Council meeting last night. It may well prove to be invaluable evidence in a number of legal matters.