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  #21  
Old Posted Jan 9, 2016, 2:04 PM
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Good old "Bucket Defence," nothing beats that!
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  #22  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2016, 12:07 AM
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City's attempt to head off rezoning fights in Centretown fails

David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: January 25, 2016 | Last Updated: January 25, 2016 3:48 PM EST


The city is stuck with a ruling that strict maximum heights for buildings can’t be locked into the plan for Centretown, a Superior Court judge has ruled.

With its plan for the downtown district, the City of Ottawa tried to get a little bit cute. Usually, how tall a building can be is written into the city’s zoning code, which is relatively easy to change. When the city updated its plan a couple of years ago for Centretown, the neighbourhood that’s seen the most battles over tall buildings lately, it tried to set maximum heights in Centretown’s “community design plan,” a broader and more powerful thing that’s more difficult to tweak.

Most fights over proposals for tall buildings come about when property owners say a community design plan seems to allow taller construction than some obsolete zoning bylaw. Locking buildings heights, in storeys and metres, into Centretown’s plan was supposed to forestall those fights and, thanks to a quirk of Ontario’s planning law, make the city some money off developers when their rezoning applications are successful.

No can do, ruled the Ontario Municipal Board, which can and does overturn city council decisions. Community design plans aren’t meant to be that specific, the board said. It’s one thing to set ranges or define what you mean by a low-rise or a high-rise building, but if you want maximum heights set for each piece of land in downtown Ottawa, you put them in the zoning.

That decision could in theory be overruled by a court. But there’s no legal question with the board’s decision that’s worth a court’s time, Justice Marc Labrosse decided after hearing the outline of the city’s challenge from city lawyer Tim Marc.

Labrosse denied the city “leave to appeal” — the opportunity to have the case heard in full before a panel of appeal judges.

The OMB gets its authority from provincial laws and it should only be overruled when it’s made an unreasonable decision, Labrosse wrote. “This (decision) was within the board’s jurisdiction and the reasonableness (or correctness) of the board’s decision is not open to serious debate,” the judge said.

Its adjudicator, Richard Makuch, considered all the evidence and did his job, Labrosse wrote. Marc had complained that Makuch didn’t give the city’s experts their due, but although Makuch didn’t wrestle deeply with the arguments they made when he wrote his own ruling, the judge found he clearly had heard them, and there’s no sign that Makuch misunderstood what they were saying.

If there’s a saving grace for the city — and others in Ontario that might want to copy Ottawa — Labrosse said the municipal board’s ruling isn’t total and sweeping. “The board’s decision is specific to these circumstances and not a broader statement of the law that relates to official plans,” he wrote.

But still, the city lost, which means its attempt to head off future tall-building fights is scotched and it has to pay the corporation that owns the building and parking lot at 267 O’Connor St., which wants to redevelop the property and won this court battle along the way, $9,000 in compensation for the court time.

dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...ntretown-fails
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  #23  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2016, 12:53 AM
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Interesting... this will reduce at least some of the red tape that developers have been facing when trying to increase density in the Centretown area (and nearby areas).
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  #24  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2016, 1:17 AM
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City considers slashing building-permit fees

Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 2, 2016 | Last Updated: March 2, 2016 12:42 PM EST


The city wants to slash its fees for building permits.

The proposal comes after members of the planning committee in November questioned why there are millions tucked away in three separate reserve funds, which were set up to make sure the city could enforce the provincial building code despite downturns in construction activity. The combined balance, as of Dec. 31, exceeded $51 million.

Revenue from building permit fees is not supposed to exceed the costs of paying for staff, as well as the vehicles and equipment used to do their jobs.

Building permit fees, which are based on square footage, have not been adjusted for since 2013, and appear to generally offset total expenditures, making them revenue neutral, according to the staff report the planning committee will discuss next week.

The city collected $21.6 million in fees last year, but spent just over $23 million. A reduction in the number of building permit applications resulted in about $1.5 million less in revenue.

Although growth is projected to remain slow in 2016, the department still has enough cash to do its work, the report says.

Staff recommends a 10 per cent cut in building permit fees, which could see revenues drop by several million dollars over the next three years. The minimum fee, set at $80 in various construction categories, would not be reduced.

Any loss in revenue from either the fee reduction or weak economic growth would be offset by the reserves.

With council’s approval, the proposed reduction in building permit fees would take effect April 1.

mpearson@postmedia.com
twitter.com/mpearson78

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...ng-permit-fees
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  #25  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2016, 4:56 PM
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Why dont they use those fees to build parks or... cover the extra cost of snow removal.
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  #26  
Old Posted Mar 3, 2016, 9:47 PM
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Why dont they use those fees to build parks or... cover the extra cost of snow removal.
Or improve transit for us suckers who were stupid enough to buy a home inside the greenbelt instead of Orleans or Farrhaven?
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  #27  
Old Posted Mar 7, 2016, 6:45 PM
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Or improve transit for us suckers who were stupid enough to buy a home inside the greenbelt instead of Orleans or Farrhaven?
Municipalities are not allowed to use building permit fees as general revenue. Its stated in the 3rd paragraph of the article but it doesn't read that way if you are reading it quick.
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  #28  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2016, 12:06 AM
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Forcing affordable units into Ottawa condo towers won't be easy

David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 15, 2016 | Last Updated: March 15, 2016 2:14 PM EDT


Cities will soon be allowed to make developers include “affordable” units in new developments that need rezonings, the provincial government says, but it might not make much difference outside Toronto.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Ted McMeekin said Monday he’s working on legislation to give cities and towns in Ontario powers they’ve asked for for years now. Advocates call it “inclusionary zoning.” The basics aren’t complicated: A developer wants a rezoning for a 30-storey condo tower and city council says fine, but 50 of the 250 units in it have to qualify as affordable.

In Ottawa, the city defines “affordable housing” as costing no more than 30 per cent of the gross income of a household in the 30th percentile for renters, or in the 40th percentile for buyers. That’s about $1,275 a month in rent or a $240,000 purchase price. That’s cheap, especially if we’re talking about a place for a family.

McMeekin’s details are scant — there are consultations to be done, legislation to be drafted, committee work to be run through, and maybe the Queen’s Park part will be finished by the end of the year. Then cities will have to work it into their planning regimes. Here, figure that’ll happen in 2019, the next time Ottawa’s is due for a top-to-bottom overhaul.

“I can say that we’re very interested in seeing what this looks like and what the possibilities are,” says Coun. Jan Harder, who chairs city council’s planning committee. But until she knows what the provincial government will let her do, she can’t say whether she sees value in doing it.

Developers are skeptical. Not only because including cheaper units in high-end projects will cost them money and probably increase prices for other customers, though that’s part of it. Claridge Homes’s Neil Malhotra calls that part a hidden tax on other first-time homebuyers.

But he also thinks the basic economics of the idea could be a serious problem in a place like Ottawa.

“Inclusionary zoning works in places, I personally think, where land values make up a really high component of the cost of housing,” he says. In Ottawa, although a downtown block isn’t cheap, it’s still “very low,” relatively speaking.

“You look at a place like Manhattan, the land cost is significant compared to the cost of construction,” Malhotra says. “And Toronto would be somewhere in the middle.”

Dividing expensive land among more residents can mean you add more units without affecting the finances of a project all that much. But if it’s the units themselves that are relatively expensive to construct, that means each “affordable” one can make a noticeable difference in the prices of the rest.

“We have to be cognizant of the relationship we have with the industry that’s building and what this looks like to them,” Harder agrees. “In Toronto, I think it’s a lot different than it is here, and a lot of what happens at Queen’s Park is driven by what the needs of Toronto are.”

In Ottawa, we may need to trade other things to developers to balance this out, she says, though she’s not sure what.

One way to make a place “affordable” to a buyer is to construct it cheaply, so it starts falling apart and costing money. Purchase or rental units can be small or badly located — either somewhere inconvenient in the city or unpleasant within a condo building, like by the garbage room. Or they can be free of amenities that usually cost money to put in and maintain.

Some places with inclusionary zoning have seen buildings constructed with “poor doors.” These are separate entrances that lead to different lobbies and elevators that go to different floors, so that the two classes of residents share one structure but not any common spaces. This seems indecent at first, and yet it’s not very different from constructing two separate buildings. If there’s a pool and a gym, say, maybe they’re only accessible to the people who don’t go in and out the poor door, which saves some residents the fees to maintain them.

So is that OK? We’ll have to decide.

The more finely cut a project’s finances, the more incentive there is to mess around, and there are ways to game rules if they’re badly written. How this is done matters a lot.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...s-wont-be-easy
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  #29  
Old Posted Mar 29, 2016, 5:24 PM
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Suburban v. urban: Stittsville subdivision gives rise to height debate
Minto can build the Potter's Key development, so long as townhouses don't back on to single family homes. But urban councillors say this sets a bad precedent.

By: Lucy Scholey Metro Published on Mon Mar 28 2016


A 24-hectare plot of land in Stittsville will officially be home to a controversial 400-unit subdivision. But the development discussion has given rise to another debate: building heights in suburban-versus-urban wards.

At the last council meeting, councillors voted in favour of the Potter’s Key development on the condition that only single-family homes can back on to existing single-family homes.

Previously, developer Minto wanted a block of the 138 townhouses to abut single-family homes. Several neighbours opposed this idea, arguing that townhouses won’t look nice in their backyards.

While the amendment to the plan was seen as a compromise by some neighbours, three urban councillors said it could set a bad precedent for other areas of the city.

Without naming names, Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper said council often deals with high-rise towers in low-rise residential areas.

“I couldn't support this change at council given that so little regard is often given to compatibility issues in the core when we're dealing with 15-, 20- and even 30-storey towers next to or very close to our low-rise residential areas,” he later wrote in his weekly newsletter.

Capital Coun. David Chernushenko agreed with Leiper and Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney, who also voted against the plan. But Chernushenko flipped his reasoning and voted in favour of the motion, in the hopes that residents in his ward would be offered the “same protection” against non-compatible development proposals.

The thing is, the city “supports intensification throughout the urban area,” according to the official plan. Councillors Jan Harder and Stephen Blais touched on this point.

“There is a difference between Centretown and the suburbs,” said Blais.

Michael Powell, president of the Dalhousie Community Association, drew parallels between the Stittsville proposal and Tamarack’s nine-storey condo development proposed for Norman Street in Little Italy. His association recently lost an appeal battle with the Ontario Municipal Board over this plan, which is slated for a neighbourhood of four-storey homes.

“It’s too easy to have urban versus suburban battles,” he said. “Ultimately, we all live in the same city and I think we should all be working to make sure that it’s a liveable place anywhere.”

http://www.metronews.ca/news/ottawa/...ng-debate.html
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  #30  
Old Posted Mar 30, 2016, 1:15 PM
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[B]Suburban v. urban: Stittsville subdivision gives rise to height debate
Minto can build the Potter's Key development, so long as townhouses don't back on to single family homes. But urban councillors say this sets a bad precedent.

At the last council meeting, councillors voted in favour of the Potter’s Key development on the condition that only single-family homes can back on to existing single-family homes.

Previously, developer Minto wanted a block of the 138 townhouses to abut single-family homes. Several neighbours opposed this idea, arguing that townhouses won’t look nice in their backyards.http://www.metronews.ca/news/ottawa/...ng-debate.html
This entire debate is ridiculous. The townhouses, I would assume, were no taller than the existing homes. That being said, not having a 3 foot wide side yard apperently makes all the difference? I dont think there would be any difference in property values between backing onto a townhouse or a single family house.

This motion should ought to have never made it to council as the zoning in this area is likely a low-density residential suburb. That means what, 2 floors? So it should not matter whether it is a townhome, semi detached or fully detached so long as the height requirments are met right?

Im sure the next step will be 'we dont want townhouses across the street from us because we dont want to eat breakfast in out living room while staring at them'. The cities insanity knows no bounds.
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  #31  
Old Posted Mar 30, 2016, 3:05 PM
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Im sure the next step will be 'we dont want townhouses across the street from us because we dont want to eat breakfast in out living room while staring at them'. The cities insanity knows no bounds.
Don't give them talking points, please.
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  #32  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2016, 2:44 PM
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Don't give them talking points, please.
If this we were in England pretty much all of our housing would be townhouses, because the allow for higher density and that sense of space you get from the suburbs.

But dont worry, theyll still get better transit than you.
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  #33  
Old Posted Apr 13, 2016, 8:28 PM
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This entire debate is ridiculous..... The cities insanity knows no bounds.
Agreed on your first to last points. I've seen one development proposal where the existing residents wanted like-lots to like-lots. The existing 50' lots weren't happy with the proposed 40' lots backing on to them.
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  #34  
Old Posted Apr 29, 2016, 4:44 PM
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Can someone fill me in. There seems to be a great number of the general public that don't like condos, why? With the RVLB coming, reading comment a lot were oppose to the plans just cause it more condos. I've seen this for other plan condo construction. At this point condos are kind of a necessity for downtown living. What do these people want?
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  #35  
Old Posted Apr 29, 2016, 8:25 PM
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Can someone fill me in. There seems to be a great number of the general public that don't like condos, why? With the RVLB coming, reading comment a lot were oppose to the plans just cause it more condos. I've seen this for other plan condo construction. At this point condos are kind of a necessity for downtown living. What do these people want?
People see condos as just away for the private sector to make money. They don't see the life it brings to the city, the increased transit ridership, the extra support for the downtown retail, restaurant and entertainment venues.

What these people want is what Devcore proposed; big museums and novelty attractions on giant windswept plazas that are dead after 5 p.m.
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  #36  
Old Posted Apr 30, 2016, 6:31 AM
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Can someone fill me in. There seems to be a great number of the general public that don't like condos, why? With the RVLB coming, reading comment a lot were oppose to the plans just cause it more condos. I've seen this for other plan condo construction. At this point condos are kind of a necessity for downtown living. What do these people want?
People seem to hate change, traffic, bikes, density, low density, taxis, ubers, dead spaces, liveliness, and anything else you can think of. Most parts of ottawa could improve themselves by simply ignoring the people that live there
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  #37  
Old Posted May 7, 2016, 1:05 AM
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People see condos as just away for the private sector to make money. They don't see the life it brings to the city, the increased transit ridership, the extra support for the downtown retail, restaurant and entertainment venues.

What these people want is what Devcore proposed; big museums and novelty attractions on giant windswept plazas that are dead after 5 p.m.
Make sense.

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People seem to hate change, traffic, bikes, density, low density, taxis, ubers, dead spaces, liveliness, and anything else you can think of. Most parts of ottawa could improve themselves by simply ignoring the people that live there
I'm really starting to think this
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  #38  
Old Posted May 7, 2016, 1:39 AM
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Yeah, democracy is the worst, the last people who should have any say in their communities are the people who have invested in them. Please person who has voted with your feet and wallet to live elsewhere, improve my part of Ottawa for me.
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  #39  
Old Posted Jul 7, 2016, 5:54 PM
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Ottawa's ugly planning history

By Bruce Firestone, OBJ Contributor
Published on July 06, 2016


Let’s review some of the highlights (or lowlights, if you will) of urban planning in the nation’s capital through the years:

Ottawa got rid of streetcars many years ago, not to replace them with subway lines, but with dirty, smelly diesel buses that get stuck in the snow every winter.

The National Capital Commission expropriated lands at LeBreton Flats at what was then a flourishing working-class community only to demolish the neighbourhood and replace it with nothing for decades. Eventually, the NCC approved construction of a few unimaginative condo towers, thereby creating another “nowhere.”

Ottawa saved – wait for it, Dr. Evil-style – “one million dollars” on the design and construction of its downtown arena by truncating half its seating capacity so that the Civic Centre was obsolete the day it opened in 1967.

The city signed a binding agreement with two respected firms (Siemens and PCL) for construction of a light-rail line to the south, only to renege on its agreement. That decision caused the city to miss out on $900 million in senior government funding, not to mention $2 billion of real estate projects – hotels, apartments, shopping areas and other commercial space – planned for the areas around new LRT stations. The city also lost $80 million of its own investment in planning, design and right-of-way acquisition and got sued for $177 million in the process, eventually settling the suit for about $35 million plus millions more in legal fees. All to build exactly nothing.

The NCC built "parkways" – a.k.a. roads – between areas where people live and Ottawa’s three beautiful rivers and canals, along the way closing or demolishing change rooms, toilets and small stores. As a result, even if you’ve lived in Ottawa for decades, you don’t fully realize its beauty since you are separated from its waterways by tens of thousands of fast-moving cars and buses. When you do manage to access them, there is nowhere to get a tea, coffee or muffin or go to the bathroom.

Ontario amalgamated 12 governments in the former Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton into one, the City of Ottawa, ostensibly to provide for more rational management and cost savings. Instead, the number of full-time-equivalent municipal positions – what you and I would call “jobs” – jumped from 12,500 in the pre-amalgamation days to 16,500, producing a vast bureaucracy that couldn’t find Ottawa’s rural villages with a compass and a map and costing taxpayers an extra $800 million.

To this day, Ottawa allows suburbs where you'll find 3,000 stick-built homes in a row without catching sight of a corner store, a pub, a shop, a dental office or a medical clinic and where every trip requires a vehicle that must travel on curvilinear roads with rights-of-way wide enough to host Formula One races.

I could go on for hours. So imagine my surprise when I learned recently that the city, which already legalized in-home suites some time ago, was contemplating adding coach houses to its list of permitted uses.

I have fond memories of living in what was then called a granny flat in Santa Cruz, Calif., many years ago.

The big house in front was occupied by a lady who I thought was impossibly old (probably about the age I am today – her 60s). I got to know her a bit, so I asked her why she’d built a tiny one-bedroom home in her backyard.

"Well, I like students," she said. “I like their company. My own family has kind of forgotten about me.”

And it was true. I never heard her phone ring, and she never had any visitors. She was lonely and, in addition to having the company of the students, she felt safer having someone else live on her property.

Then she added, "And frankly, Bruce, I can also use the extra income, too." The year was 1969.

The point is, if you want to keep your most valuable resource in your village, town or city – your kids – you have to build your brand. You have to make it feel like living in your community is a cool thing to do and convince young people they can do great things without moving down the road to a megacity, which noted urbanist Richard Florida says is a place of 10 million or more, of which Canada has none.

To that end, two senior Ottawa planners – Alain Miguelez, program manager for zoning, intensification and neighbourhoods, and John Smit, manager of policy development and urban design, Alain’s boss – recently sat down with me for 90 minutes of frank talk about the state of the city’s planning.

"In my tour of duty in zoning, I’ve been focused on removing barriers," Mr. Miguelez told me.

"I was able to oversee up-zoning of about 100 kilometres of arterial frontage (to allow both residential and commercial uses), get micro-retail zoning passed without appeal, get more front-yard parking flexibility in the ’burbs, establish streetscape character zoning for infill in older neighbourhoods, open the door to corner lot severances in the R1 bungalow belt inside the Greenbelt, allow front-to-back semis, allow wrap-around semis, and now we’re doing coach houses, plus a review of minimum parking requirements. We’ll end up eliminating them, or significantly reducing them, at key locations, allowing open-air markets as-of-right on church lands, and we’re about to start projects on makerspace, removing obsolete restrictions in many rural zones and cleaning up yet more obsolete restrictions in several urban industrial zones."

Mr. Miguelez credited his superiors with giving him leeway to pursue changes he believes are necessary.

"I’ve been lucky that senior management has gone along with all my stuff," he said.

"I’ve also been successful with humour sometimes. One of my star planners is a cartoonist, and I got him permission to do a video about what impact Ottawa’s parking standards is having on development in this city."

For example, Montreal requires one parking space per 250 square metres of restaurant space, while Toronto asks for seven. Ottawa? It demands a whopping 23. What this means is that pleasing streetscapes and walkable places, such as Hintonburg or the Glebe, could not be built today.

It’s worth watching the city planner’s video. Just plug "Review of Minimum Parking Standards" into YouTube’s search bar.

Maybe, as American author and social critic James Howard Kunstler says in his book Home from Nowhere, it might be better to “burn all your zoning codes.”

Mr. Smit won’t go that far.

"Right now, developers, community associations and BIAs (business improvement areas) have to twist themselves into pretzels to get things done in this city," he said. "Our job is to rationalize that. (Former deputy city manager) Ned Lathrop used to say, ‘Ottawa is changing from a big little city to a little big city,’ and we have to adjust to that. Once a city gets to a million population (Ottawa is approaching that now), its economy and culture shifts in fundamental ways, and planning has to shift with it."

Bruce M. Firestone is founder of the Ottawa Senators and a broker at Century 21 Explorer Realty. Follow him on Twitter @ProfBruce.

http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Fire...ning-history/1
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  #40  
Old Posted Aug 27, 2016, 1:01 PM
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Nussbaum's planning presentation during conference irks some at city hall

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: August 26, 2016 | Last Updated: August 26, 2016 7:39 PM EDT


A councillor’s presentation at a national conference partially highlighting the perceived dark sides of municipal planning has raised eyebrows in some offices at Ottawa City Hall.

Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Tobi Nussbaum delivered a presentation called Fixing the 5 ‘i’s’ of Planning Failure during a Canadian Institute of Planners conference in Quebec City in July.

The presentation bemoans the influence developers have on the planning process, flags the lack of knowledge people, including politicians, have of planning issues and highlights examples from planning files at the City of Ottawa.

For example, in the presentation he points to the city’s plan to widen the Airport Parkway when it’s also trying to improve the adjacent O-Train Trillium Line.

Nussbaum also promotes “solutions” developed by the City of Ottawa, including educational material, planning workshops, a pre-development application consultation pilot program and a planning concierge program open to community groups.

Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder, the chair of council’s planning committee, said the presentation, which Nussbaum has published on his website, “was brought to my attention by a couple of people who were concerned about it.”

According to Harder, she heard from staff who are concerned that Nussbaum’s presentation suggests there’s sometimes interference and influence in the city’s planning process.

“I think they were surprised and they were uncomfortable because they saw it differently,” Harder said. “I guess it’s the interpretation.”

Harder said the city should be proud when councillors attract the interest of conference organizers, but it’s a problem if people at the conference were under the impression Nussbaum was representing the City of Ottawa. Some in Ottawa believed “there was too much negativity” in the presentation, Harder said.

Harder acknowledged that she doesn’t agree with some of Nussbaum’s opinions on planning. He also sits on the planning committee.

Nussbaum, who was invited to speak at the conference, said he made it clear during the presentation in Quebec City that he was presenting his beliefs about planning, not representing the city’s position. He has only made the presentation at that conference. Nussbaum said he received positive feedback from participants.

“There are lots of great things happening in the city, which I pointed to, so it shouldn’t be seen by anybody as a critique of the City of Ottawa,” Nussbaum said. “It should be seen based on my experience trying to put forward solutions to ensuring that we have better planning outcomes, yes in the City of Ottawa, but also more broadly.”

Nussbaum said the specific examples he brings up in the presentation aren’t his perceived worst-case scenarios, but they provide an opportunity to illustrate the “tensions” in planning. He noted it’s hard to draw conclusions strictly from the slides since there was also an oral presentation.

“I’m very clear not to point fingers at planners alone. I take a lot of responsibility as an elected official to make sure I’m doing the best job I can to achieve the type of planning residents want,” Nussbaum said.

“I’m casting the net very widely and taking responsibility myself as an elected official for the things we can do a better job on.”

Nussbaum drove to Quebec City, paid a reduced conference fee and stayed one night in a hotel, all which will show up in his office expense reports, he said.

Harder said she has asked Nussbaum to write a report on the conference for the planning committee.

jwilling@postmedia.com
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